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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22552633">5+ Headcanons: Collection #1</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/CheshireSense'>CheshireSense (cywscross)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Multi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:36:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>33,011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22552633</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/CheshireSense</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of headcanon AUs, cross-posted from my tumblr.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Giotto | Vongola Primo/Rokudou Mukuro, Hadrian Evans/Orion Black (OC), Harry Potter &amp; Orion Black (OC), Koyonagi Senzou (OC)/Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Ichigo/Shihouin Yoruichi/Urahara Kisuke, Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>93</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>958</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Bleach + HSE + Post-Fic AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>HIRUMA-MUSOUKA asked:<br/>For the 5+ headcanons post, I was interested in seeing if you had anything for UraIchi. I didn't have a specific au in mind although I really enjoyed "Hope Springs Eternal" and would be interested in any epilogue thoughts, or something Seireitei University perhaps.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Utter crack, thy name is Seireitei University ^_^|||  I’ll give you something from HSE instead lol~</p><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Post-Hope Springs Eternal, Getting Together, Epilogue</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/187918258063/for-the-5-headcanons-post-i-was-interested-in">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> They never do get around to having an awkward dancing around each other/pining/dramatic confession moment. They have an apocalypse to reverse and no time for lovesickness, but also Ichigo’s spent too long on his own to realize those are things a lot of people go through, especially at his age. They already spend most of their time together, Ichigo knows more about Kisuke than he does any of the others, and they practically sleep in the same bed, with how close their futons have gotten (because sometimes they stay up at night lobbing new ideas about the Hogyoku back and forth and planning for the past-future or just talking about nothing until they fall asleep). Kisuke’s always been a category of his own in Ichigo’s mind, and if he starts thinking he wouldn’t mind waking up more often with his head pillowed on Kisuke’s thigh while Kisuke scribbles new theories in his notebook, it’s not as if it’s anything that different from what they’ve already been doing anyway. On Kisuke’s part, he probably notices before Ichigo, and he thinks for a hot second that he should probably feel guilty– but a fierce sort of possessiveness overshadows it more and more with every time Ichigo turns to look at him first, with every smile shared over tea at midnight, with every lethally beautiful dance together in the training grounds, and Kisuke can’t bring himself to object in the end. He figures he’ll go at Ichigo’s pace, and that will have to be good enough.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> The world is very different once they’re back in the past. Aizen is handily taken care of with a bit of custom-made poison and an assassin of Yoruichi’s caliber, staged as an accident and all his research quietly destroyed. The problems come after that. Half of them don’t even remember what it’s like anymore, to live in a world where stepping outside doesn’t mean potential instant death, where they don’t have to hoard food and carry weapons and mark every hiding place and exit in any given vicinity. Even for the adults and Shinigami amongst them, it’s difficult not to flinch under the natural sunlight or go their separate ways and put down roots in buildings no longer half as warded as the warehouse they’ve lived in for the past decade and a half.</p><p> </p><p>Some adjust more quickly. Ichigo does not. He stares at the crowds and unbroken streets and bustling shops like they’re completely foreign. He jumps at music blasting from a loudspeaker and is constantly tamping down the reiatsu that sparks at his fingertips every time a group of people walks by chattering freely. He walks into restaurants like he half-thinks they’re one of Aizen’s illusions. Kisuke… <em>hopes </em>he helps. They go on walks and he shows Ichigo more open, quieter areas like the parks and the riverbank and the hiking trails. He shows him hand-drawn maps of Karakura, points out all the entrances and exits of everything from the mall to the high school to the hospital. They take it slow, and whenever Ichigo starts looking overwhelmed, a couple Kidou spells from Kisuke is enough to redirect the crowds somewhere else.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> Another perk of travelling back to the past is that it fixes Ichigo’s body. His power levels stay the same, his control and strength and speed all remain, and they even made it so that he keeps his eighteen years instead of being stuffed back into his ten-year-old body (there’s a moment where they have to scramble for paperwork and possibly amnesia-fy an entire town), but for the longest time after they return, Ichigo takes to staring into the bathroom mirror with something as desperate as it is disbelieving. He never does break the habit of wearing clothes that cover up most of his skin, but he also bares himself for Kisuke more easily, and Kisuke loves the way he shudders when they’re in bed and he’s running slow reverent hands over miles of tanned flesh, taking just as much comfort in the smooth warmth of a body unmarred by his mistakes.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> Isshin is a Problem for all of two minutes when he catches Ichigo pinning Kisuke to a wall in the Shouten, kissing the breath out of him, thoroughly enough that it takes several dazed seconds for Kisuke to pull his brain cells back together when Isshin shrieks something unintelligible from the doorway. Technically, Isshin knows about the Other Future, but he has no memory of it, not like the rest of them do, and they certainly didn’t tell him about <em>Ichigo and Kisuke</em> - Ichigo because he couldn’t be bothered with someone who might as well be a stranger, Kisuke because he’s never been in the business of airing his personal laundry. So Isshin shouts and accuses Kisuke of being a pervert and preying on his innocent son and demanding he keep away from Ichigo from now on, and Kisuke only has time to feel Benihime seethe at the back of his mind before Masaki appears, casually kicks Isshin back out into the courtyard, waves at them with a cheerful reminder to “practice safe sex!”, and then she’s gone, dragging Isshin away with her. The next time they see Isshin, he still glares daggers at Kisuke but he keeps his opinions to himself, especially since every time he opens his mouth, Masaki’s smile would brighten like demonic sunshine, and Isshin would snap his mouth shut again with a wince, face bleaching white as he adopts a mien more suitable for a funeral. Ichigo’s mother is terrifying, and Kisuke prays he never gets on the wrong side of her.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> Ichigo’s favourite thing about being back in the past is how much more freedom he has. He doesn’t know any other way to put it– it isn’t as if he was locked up in that Other Future, and it’s been years since anything could really pose a danger to him - Aizen aside - so it wasn’t like he hadn’t been able to wander wherever he pleased even back then. But here, where people don’t scuttle around like they’re constantly expecting death, where there’s no bodies littering the ground, and the air doesn’t smell like blood and rot, Ichigo in turn has no reason to constantly keep his guard up, to patrol and scavenge for supplies and be ready for battle at any moment. Sure, it’s a little boring with only a few Hollows to kill every other month, but it also means his family is a lot safer, and he’s <em>free</em> to do things like tangle his fingers with Kisuke’s when they take a peaceful walk in the evening, or go out for dinner and come back late without anyone panicking about something happening to either of them, or just stay in bed all day with Kisuke, knowing the cupboards and fridge are full and they don’t have to get up to tend to the farm or hunt for more essentials or search for another way to end Aizen once and for all. It admittedly takes some getting used to, but this world is definitely preferable to the apocalyptic one, and Ichigo doesn’t plan on wasting a single day of it.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. HP + Harry&Orion + CLV AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ANONYMOUS asked:<br/>An AU of Cest La Vie in which Harry is more like Hadrian and strike utter terror into anyone who messes with Orion?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lmao I feel like we’re leaving Hadrian to hang in his own world T_T But okay, what if Orion grew up with a Harry who was more like Hadrian, yes?</p><p>Edit: OMFG THIS GOT LONG I HAVE ZERO SELF-CONTROL IN THIS UNIVERSE AND I FEEL LIKE THERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS.</p><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> C'est La Vie AU, Possible Spoilers</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/187918984348/an-au-of-cest-la-vie-in-which-harry-is-more-like">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> The first time Harry remembers meeting Orion is when he’s four and his parents tell him that his Uncle Siri and Uncle Remy have a son now, his age, and they hope Harry will get along with him. Harry doesn’t really have any friends - he’s met Fred and George and Ron and Neville a few times at the park, but never long enough to play for more than an hour or two. Their parents say it’s not safe to spend too much time outside of their houses at the moment for some reason, but Uncle Siri and Uncle Remy’s house might as well be a second home to Harry, so Harry hopes he’ll be able to make Actual Friends with their new son. So they go, and Harry’s first impression of Orion is black hair and blue eyes and a pale face attached to a boy half-hiding behind Uncle Remy’s leg. Harry’s not sure why but the boy is obviously the one he’s supposed to meet, so he stumbles forward, curious and excited and just a little nervous, and boldly introduces himself. It takes a few moments, but then the other boy mumbles hello and says his name is Orion, and after another few seconds he finally lets go of Uncle Remy’s hand and takes a hesitant step towards Harry instead, so Harry decides they’re off to a great start and promptly drags the boy off to play. Since Orion is new, Harry tells him about all his favourite games, but Orion has to try <em>everything</em> so he’ll know what <em>his </em>favourite games are, and Orion is quiet, not shy like Neville, just <em>quiet</em>, but he also smiles more the longer he plays with Harry, so Harry tries to be patient. By the time dinner swings around, Orion is responding more often, with more than just nods or headshakes, and Mum even has to remind them to eat several times because they’re talking too much. By the time they have to leave, Harry can’t wait to come back.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> The first time Harry learns Orion is a werewolf is when he’s seven. He sees Orion almost every day now, so it’s that much more obvious when there are a few days every month where he <em>doesn’t</em>, and he’s been complaining about it for <em>years</em>. His parents always tell him that Uncle Sirius and Uncle Remus and Orion are busy (<em>what are they busy with?</em>), they have a family thing (<em>aren’t they their family too?</em>), they’re out of town (<em>where have they gone?</em>), Orion is sick (<em>we should take over some soup!</em>), and so on and so forth. But then he’s seven and sulking at home because this time it’s Uncle Sirius who wants a quiet day in (since <em>when?</em> and can’t Orion just come over to Harry’s instead?), and even Mum and Dad are out doing adult things. Uncle Peter is babysitting though, and Uncle Peter is never around much and always looks a little jumpy but sometimes he tells Harry things about The War, the big dangerous fight that mostly happened before Harry was even born, the one Dad doesn’t like talking about and Mum doesn’t like Harry asking about because he’s too young. Uncle Peter says Harry is mature for his age though, very smart, almost a grownup himself, which is <em>true</em>, so Harry doesn’t rat Uncle Peter out to his mum, who can be really scary, and he doesn’t say anything even when some of the things Uncle Peter tell him maybe-sort-of-kind-of scares him a little. He tells Harry that the bad guy Mum and Dad fought was very evil and commanded whole armies of dark wizards and dangerous monsters, and he killed so many people and hurt so many people, and sometimes people were even forced to hurt and kill other people for him. Today, he’s rambling about werewolf packs and how they were allowed to eat whole villages and steal and bite regular children in exchange for their loyalty, and they were extra dangerous around the full moon each month—- and abruptly, Harry makes the connection. It only takes a calendar and a few more months of observation to confirm his hunch, he even sneaks into Dad’s work files to read about rogue werewolves just to make sure Uncle Peter wasn’t telling tales, and he <em>wasn’t</em>, and then- and then he doesn’t know what to do. He’s had nightmares about werewolves - and vampires, and inferi, and huge spiders the size of buildings that he’s forgotten what Uncle Peter called them - and he can’t help but remember the stories about people being ripped apart and kids never seeing their parents again and turning into monsters themselves. But. But he also <em>knows</em> Orion, knows Uncle Remus too, he’s grown up with them, and they can’t possibly do any of what Uncle Peter says werewolves do. So maybe there are exceptions. Or maybe the bad guy forced the werewolves to eat people. Either way, the monsters in Uncle Peter’s stories <em>can’t</em> be Harry’s best friend, <em>obviously </em>- Orion’s afraid of squirrels for Merlin’s sake, and just last week he spent half an hour throwing up in the toilet because Ron dared him into a marshmallow-eating contest and <em>everyone</em> got grounded. And Uncle Remus wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a child. He still gives Harry and Orion piggyback rides even though they’re getting too old for that sort of thing. Scary monsters wouldn’t be like that at all. So Harry makes a decision - he’ll treat Orion like Orion and Uncle Remus like Uncle Remus, and until he meets an <em>actual</em> werewolf monster, he’s going to be brave and he won’t let Uncle Peter’s stories or Dad’s reports scare him.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> The first time Harry hits someone, he’s ten, and they’re at one of those galas that Mum and Dad reluctantly dress up for. Most of the time, Harry - and Orion - doesn’t have to go, but occasionally, Dad complains about keeping up appearances and Mum frowns and stuffs him into a set of his nice robes. Harry doesn’t mind too much - it’s mostly boring, although he has to remember to smile and say nice things when Ministry people come up to talk to him, which isn’t often. This time, he’s standing with Orion in a corner, each of them sipping at a fizzy drink (they’re only allowed one glass, it’s not alcoholic but it’s <em>very</em> sugary). Then this stuck-up pureblood boy struts over with a smirk and says to Orion without so much as a hello, “I’m surprised they let dirty mutts through the door, Black. Did you have to sit up and beg?”</p><p>Harry doesn’t even know what happens until it’s happened. He was told about werewolves a year after he first figured it out. He pretended to be surprised, but he also hugged Orion and Uncle Remus and made sure they knew that <em>he</em> knew they weren’t monsters.</p><p>He’s never come across anyone who thought otherwise. Even Uncle Peter - the few times he’s slunk in to join them for dinner - doesn’t treat Orion or Uncle Remus any differently than he does the rest of the family.</p><p>So Harry reacts before he even makes the decision to do it. One second he’s staring at Orion’s hunched shoulders and the open scared hurt on his face, and then the pureblood boy is on the ground crying from a broken nose, and a moment later, all the adults are descending on them and shouting.</p><p>Hours later, Harry is back home and grounded until next month, but Orion also tackled him with a hug as soon as they flooed through, <em>and</em> he’s allowed to stay and eat ice-cream with Harry, so Harry figures he’s not in <em>too</em> much trouble. Mum scolds him for using physical violence, and Uncle Remus explains in resigned tones that some people are just <em>like that</em> and Harry shouldn’t let it bother him, but Uncle Sirius winks at him from behind everyone’s backs, eyes glittering with something as hot and fierce as the feeling in Harry’s own chest when that boy had insulted Orion, and Dad pulls him aside later and tells him to be more subtle. After all, Marauders don’t get caught.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> The first time someone at Hogwarts takes a shot at Orion for being a werewolf, Harry’s already had enough, he is ready to throw down. It’s just a third-year, so he spends a month reading up and practicing the few simple spells he’d need, and then he turns a patch of ground into a sinkhole, lures the third-year outside, and leaves him there overnight. Hagrid only finds him in the morning, and the cold and bug bites he gets leaves him stuck in the Hospital Wing for a week. Orion gives him sideways looks for even longer, but some of the tension in his shoulders that’s been there since Dumbledore made the announcement slides away, and the next time someone insults him, his chin doesn’t dip in shame, and he doesn’t give his bully anything more than a cool look of disinterest before turning on his heel and following Harry to their next class. Of course, they still prank the daylights out of the bully by the end of the week.</p><p> </p><p><b>5. </b>It takes four years of hard work before people <em>learn</em> - never insult Orion Black when word of it can and will get back to Harry Potter. Especially since Harry and Orion’s circle of friends start getting bigger after they enter Hogwarts, with allies in every House, and even the thickest, most bigoted students know better than to turn what feels like half the school against them. So, at least for the rest of their school tenure, being a werewolf doesn’t mean much anymore. New students find out, and they learn the facts or they’re warned against speaking unwisely. At the end of the day, Orion is just another student, albeit probably the most protected in Hogwarts, and Harry makes damn sure every single person knows it.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Bleach + Magic AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ANONYMOUS asked:<br/>Bleach, a world where magic has begun to reappear after many years of mundanity</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hmmm let’s see…</p><p>Edit: Lmao I just gave you five random headcanons in this universe, my plot sort of meandered and then fell off a cliff.</p><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Fantasy AU, Magic AU</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/187938647248/bleach-a-world-where-magic-has-begun-to-reappear">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> By the time Ichigo is born, magic isn’t exactly <em>common</em> or particularly widespread, but it’s also not so unexpected for a child to be born with a little something extra - like a knack for imitating voices exactly after hearing them only once, or hearing things up to five miles away, or being able to jump several feet higher than everyone else. For the most part, it’s never anything too fancy, and most people take it in stride these days, even if that neighbour does win Best Garden every year because of their literal magic green thumb, or that friend has never had to shovel snow a day in their life because they can raise the temperature of their stone path by a few degrees. There are laws - mostly fair laws - in place, regulated by the Gotei 13, and for the most part, magi and mundanes get along fine.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> But then of course there are people like Ichigo. Ichigo, whose nursery’s shadows writhe and lash out and shatter half a wall the first time he cries. But perhaps that’s also to be expected, when he has a father who can control fire and a mother whose first instinct when faced with a threat is to turn that threat into a pincushion. He’s an S-rank magi, and people like him are practically a myth in some parts of the world because the Gotei is very careful about rounding them up and wiping memories and keeping them safely hidden away from the public. S-ranks are synonymous to dangerous hostiles, and nobody wants those walking around free.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> The Gotei actually has a decent mix of magi and mundane; it’s just that the methods and magitech blades they’ve created and learned are particularly effective in subduing their targets, and their philosophy tends towards “kill first, ask questions later”. They have no problems with powerful magi… so long as those magi work for them.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> There was a breakout from the Gotei prison approximately ten years before Ichigo’s birth. Any details that managed to slip past the million and one classified stamps say that the Gotei had attempted to execute several of their own officers when they dabbled in dark magic and developed new abilities, a never-before-seen branch that made them far too dangerous. Nobody knows what happened to them. Some say the Gotei succeeded in executing them. Others say they escaped en route but were later hunted down by Gotei assassins. The truth of course is something else entirely - the Gotei was experimenting with artificial magic, and they’d hoped to implant it into their officers in order to strengthen their ranks. The officers weren’t exactly what anyone would call volunteers though, and in the end, they’d broken free and fled with the aid of allies on the outside. It’s been ten years, and no one has heard a peep from the fugitives, but those in power should know better than to think their mistakes won’t come back to haunt them.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> The well-known Shiba magi-clan - not exactly <em>Gotei</em>, but enough of their members served that they were a powerful ally - disappeared overnight, in the wake of the botched Gotei experiments. Even the ones within Gotei’s ranks packed up and vanished with the rest of their family. It made everyone uneasy, because everyone knew - no other magi-clan in the world produced as many elemental powerhouses as the Shibas did.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Bleach + UraIchi + Phoenix!Ichigo AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ANONYMOUS asked:<br/>Phoenix! Ichigo x Kisuke...? Also I really love your stories thx for getting me into bleach again</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Phoenix!Ichigo, Dark (kind of?)</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/187958335558/phoenix-ichigo-x-kisuke-also-i-really-love">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Kisuke doesn’t find out for the longest time, through Rukia’s almost-execution to the war against Aizen to Ichigo sacrificing part of his soul to the Fullbringers’ invasion, right up until the end of the Quincy war, when he and Yoruichi are about to get blown up because apparently a century of inactivity has done their skills no favours. A hundred years ago, he and Yoruichi would’ve eaten Askin for breakfast, but now they’re about to get killed right alongside their enemy, how pathetic. He spots movement out of the corner of his eye, recognizes Ichigo’s favourite Arrancar, and wishes he could toss the woman right back out because there’s no way she’s going to survive this either.</p><p>Far above them, in another dimension entirely, Ichigo dispatches Yhwach once and for all. He’s barely retracted his blade when two of the threads of soulfire he attached to his most precious people <em>twist</em> like they haven’t since his mom died, and in that moment, he doesn’t care who sees - his Zanpakutou disperses into a haze of black shadows, and between one blink and the next, he <em>reaches</em> for the two people at the other end, and lets his soulfire consume him. He <em>jumps</em>, burns himself into existence right in front of a - for once - openly shocked and terribly injured Kisuke, pauses long enough to engulf him, Yoruichi, and Nel in his fire, and then he <em>jumps</em> again, yanking his passengers with him just as something detonates.</p><p>Kisuke wakes up at the Fourth, triple-checks his memory to make sure that yes, Ichigo did appear in a burst of flames to save them, and yes, he did turn into an orange bird and cry on him and Yoruichi, which healed the worst of their injuries within seconds. Kisuke passed out sometime after that, but he knows what he saw, and the first thing he does after making sure Unohana isn’t lurking anywhere is to check on Yoruichi before escaping to hunt down Ichigo.</p><p>He finds him at the Fifth, bickering with Shinji while a reiatsu-shackled Aizen lounges in a corner of the room. Kisuke assumes it’s because nobody has anywhere to stash the man at the moment what with half the prison destroyed so they’ve dumped him on his old captain in the meantime, and he ignores the knowing smirk Aizen tips at him when he shunpos in, eyes already on Ichigo.</p><p>Ichigo looks normal enough (<em>but too pretty in the right light, more beautiful every day and Kisuke really shouldn’t be noticing things like that</em>), no fire or feathers in sight, but when he glances up upon Kisuke’s entrance, his eyes flash like flickering candles for a moment, and Kisuke <em>wants</em>.</p><p>He’s always been attracted to things that can surprise him, things he can’t instantly predict, things that draw his eye and make him stare, things that he probably has no right to want in the first place. But Ichigo has always been all of these and more, and Kisuke’s given up on denying the truth, if only to himself. He can admire from a distance, and this new development of Ichigo’s at least gives him something new to explore <em>and</em> an excuse to spend more time with the object of his affections.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Ichigo was warned very seriously by his mother about revealing what he is. Their kind are rare enough; their powers would be highly coveted if people knew. So for years, Ichigo hid what he was, never pulls it out even when he’s on the brink of death because even if he dies, it isn’t as if he won’t come back. He warns his sisters of the same, and the only place they ever flame to with their soulfire is the nest their mother inherited from <em>her</em> mother, high up in the mountains where no humans can reach. And then he’s eighteen with two wars and several invasions and more near-deaths than he can count under his belt, and Kisuke <em>knows</em>. He asks, because of course he does, curiosity shining in his eyes in a way that makes him look younger and more genuine than Ichigo’s ever seen him. And Kisuke’s pulled a lot of shit over the years, but he’s also one of the few people Ichigo has never really doubted to have his back when it counted. Besides, Kisuke is probably the last person who would run to the Shinigami about anything out of the ordinary. Ichigo’s definitely more worried about Aizen spilling the beans - if nothing else, he’d seen Ichigo disappear in a burst of flames - but so far, the sort-of-prisoner hasn’t said anything, so Ichigo figures he might as well not borrow trouble.</p><p>Instead, he drags Kisuke back to the empty Shouten before flaming both of them to the Kurosaki family nest, which is technically less a nest and more a very large domicile constructed of an interconnected series of tunnels and caves, tucked away in the mountains and cocooned by thick crisscrossing tree branches that prevents the cold from seeping in. They don’t even get further than the entrance hall before Kisuke is already wandering off, enraptured by the foreign interlocking runes shimmering faintly along the arching branches of the doorway. Ichigo rolls his eyes and leaves him to it. It looks like they’ll be here for a while so he might as well find whip up a meal for both of them. He very much doubts Kisuke ate anything before going to find him.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> After Kisuke finds out, Ichigo gifts him one of his tail feathers, bonds it to the man’s soul so that it’ll automatically revive him in the worst-case scenario, and he tells him to keep it close. Kisuke cradles it in his hands like something infinitely priceless, which it actually is, but he also looks at Ichigo with an expression full of a terribly fragile sort of awe, and Ichigo wonders when the shopkeeper will actually realize what it meansfor phoenixes to be creatures of empathy and belief and <em>emotion</em>. He’s known for months exactly what Kisuke feels for him, felt the first stirrings of it as far back as the aftermath of the Winter War, felt it from the Shouten in a corner of his mind like the comforting crackle of a fire in the middle of winter all through those seventeen months when he’d considered - more than once - killing himself just to get rid of the ache in his chest, and it had only grown since then. Ichigo knows the warmth of it, like a hot bath or a long hug or a warm meal waiting for him after a long day, and how can he not cherish that when it comes from a man who has always been so selective of those he cares about? So Ichigo knows, and reciprocates, and now he’s just waiting for Kisuke to catch up.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> The day Kisuke uses the feather Ichigo gives him, it’s to revive Yoruichi, her body still warm from battle and the bloody wound that killed her. Ichigo wasn’t even there for that. He felt the heart-jerking tug of alarm in the soulfire bond he tagged her with, but it was almost immediately alleviated, along with the flash-fire feel of one of his feathers - Kisuke’s feather - disappearing, so he assumed everything turned out alright and continued making his way to the latest bad guy who decided Soul Society needed some good old architectural reconstruction. He only finds out the details afterwards, when Kisuke approaches him looking a little like the world’s ended and a lot like he’s bracing for punishment, and confesses like it’s some kind of sin. And alright, it <em>is</em> technically against every known phoenix custom to use a feather freely gifted by a phoenix on someone <em>else</em>, practically taboo, definitely an insult, and Kisuke would know that because he’s spent more time reading up on phoenixes than Ichigo has, but Ichigo’s never been much for tradition anyway, and it isn’t as if he’d ever expect Kisuke to just <em>let</em> Yoruichi stay dead when he can help it. That would be like Kisuke expecting Ichigo to do nothing if his sisters were in danger. He tells the man as much, with a roll of his eyes, and honestly doesn’t understand why the shopkeeper looks so shocked when Ichigo just gives him another feather.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Ichigo shrugs. “If you really need to use them, I don’t mind giving you more. I mean, don’t use them for just anyone, even I’d run out of soul to give-” Kisuke flinches a little, and Ichigo sighs and leans into him, shoulder meeting shoulder, before continuing, “-but if it’s you, I don’t mind.”</p><p>Kisuke accepts the feather, still looking at it like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it, but he nods and promises to use them wisely, and then he kisses Ichigo, slow and careful like he thinks Ichigo might disappear if he presses too hard. Ichigo smiles into the kiss and pulls Kisuke in and coaxes him into something less cautious, because he isn’t breakable, and honestly, it’s about time.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> The first time Ichigo dies, it’s when he takes a blow across the chest meant for Kisuke. The Kidou spell cuts into him, <em>through</em> him, practically bisecting him, and the last thing he hears before the world goes dark is Kisuke screaming his name.</p><p>When he opens his eyes again, he’s small and weak and cold. He’s in bird form, with molting feathers and so little reiatsu a determined rabbit could come along and kill him and he wouldn’t be able to do anything. But then there are hands scooping him up, cradling him in familiar bloodstained palms, and his soulfire immediately sparks around him, searing away the liquid, absorbing the lingering essence from it, making that strength his own. Above him, Kisuke murmurs something Ichigo can’t quite make out yet, but he isn’t surprised when several seconds later, he’s lowered into the chest cavity of a a very mutilated corpse, the ribs cracked open, the heart still warm. Ichigo tears into the organ hungrily, ignoring the mess he’s making. He hears Kisuke bustling around, dragging more bodies closer. The man’s read half the Kurosaki library already; he knows what a phoenix needs to recover.</p><p>By the time Ichigo is full, he’s regained enough of his senses to realize the absolute <em>massacre</em> that the battlefield’s been reduced to. Kisuke must’ve lost his temper, which is… flattering, actually. When the man picks him up again, Ichigo preens and trills his appreciation. Kisuke doesn’t understand of course, but Ichigo gets a good look at his face this time, and some of the frantic stress lines creasing his features smooth away, although the wild look in his eyes has yet to fade, and the red of Benihime’s power still rings both his pupils.</p><p>Later, much later, when Ichigo is human-shaped and human-sized again, Kisuke curls around him in bed, one hand splayed over his back like a brand, like he can keep Ichigo safe just by keeping him here.</p><p>“Don’t ever do that again,” Kisuke whispers harshly, but there’s something resigned in his voice, like he already knows the answer.</p><p>“I make no promises,” Ichigo replies anyway, but he also adds, “I’ll always come back though. I can promise that.”</p><p>Kisuke’s fingers dig briefly into Ichigo’s back before relaxing again, and then pulling him even closer. “I’m holding you to that then.”</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Bleach + UraIchiYoru + Cyberpunk AU/Fantasy AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ANISEANDSPEARMINT asked:<br/>Oooh! Um... How about Kisuke/Yoruichi/Ichigo? Shadowrun AU (Fantasy AU if you don't know Shadowrun)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lol I have no idea what Shadowrun is, did a quick google and it’s something like magic + cyberpunk + vaguely futuristic post-apocalyptic setting + virtual reality?? Omg it’s too complicated to write just from reading the wiki lmao, I’ll just give you a cyberpunk fantasy AU.</p><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Cyberpunk AU, Fantasy AU, Polyamory, Threesome, Slums, Found Family</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/187979221533/oooh-um-how-about-kisukeyoruichiichigo">Tumblr Post</a>
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    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Kisuke is your average humble toymaker in the Slums who may or may not supply the underground Robin Hood-esque rebel faction Visored with not-so-average weapons and prosthetics and various repairs and upgrades. The Visored are pretty much wanted in every kingdom in existence, partly because half of them used to be nobles themselves and were part of the minority who hated the way they treated their citizens, mostly because they keep fucking with the other nobles, but no one except said nobles actually wants them to stop because everybody who isn’t nobility pretty much hates those who are. Mostly, it’s the three neighbouring kingdoms - Seireitei, Silbern, and Las Noches - sitting cozy up in their walled off flourishing cities up high, constantly at war with each other but with plenty to eat and plenty of money to fund their large-scale chess games, and paying almost zero attention to the poor and homeless outside their walls. That doesn’t stop them from forcibly conscripting the lower class as cannon fodder or using the Slums as their personal dumping grounds or imprisoning or executing anyone they decide is breaking one law or another. Kisuke’s stayed under the radar so far, so nobody knows he’s the man even more wanted than the Visored, if only for his prodigal skills with cybertech. He’s the one who built their equipment and vehicles, who repaired Hiyori’s spine after she’d been left unable to walk from an ambush and produced a new arm for Hachi after it was cut off in a skirmish, both of which work just as well as the original parts. Most of the nobles either want to kill him or “hire” him. But a toymaker in the Slums who cobbles together tiny cats and dragons and chickens and pixies out of scrap metal for children to play with isn’t anything to look twice at.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Here is a secret only a handful of people know - Shihouin Yoruichi was born a cripple. She couldn’t walk, at all, and even the best prosthetics money could buy from the various cybertech companies were clunky and awkward and only allowed her to limp a certain distance. Her family, one of the great noble houses of Seireitei that specialized in seduction and assassination, hid her away out of shame, right up until a rebellious teenaged Yoruichi had had enough and snuck out one night on nothing but her wobbly fake legs and a crutch. She’d spent enough time on her own for the majority of her childhood to know just about every passageway and secret door that snaked through the length and width of Seireitei. She didn’t stop until she appeared in the Slums, and she fainted from exhaustion and hunger only a few days later, but she never looked back. Kisuke found her, took her in, and then made her legs on a whim, upgrading them every time he figured out something new and <em>better</em> that he could add to them. In exchange, Yoruichi used her newfound mobility to retrieve better materials for Kisuke, robbing delivery trucks en route to Seireitei’s cybertech companies or outright stealing from her own family’s weapons storage. Anything they could buy, Kisuke could reverse-engineer and make better. Ten years after she left her old life behind, her legs are a work of art, connected to her nerves to give her complete control over them but granting her superhuman speed and jumping ability, and she’d practiced enough with them over the years that her mind had no problems keeping up with both.  The prosthetics are lightweight but strong enough to withstand the swing of a blade or the impact of a bullet, and she would give a lot to see her family’s faces if they ever realize just who has been ransacking their vaults.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> Most people carry some kind of weapon these days, but the best - for those who can afford them, or can call Kisuke a friend - can take the form of a companion when not in combat. Shinji’s is in the shape of a sphinx, all sleek lines and feline flexibility, but one that shifts into a sword in a silent whir of pulsing blue lines and polished metal at his command. Mashiro’s is a pixie, not unlike the toys commonly seen in Kisuke’s part of the Slums, except hers includes translucent wings threaded with pale green wiring. It’s perpetually perched on her shoulder, but in a fight, the pixie fuses with her hands and legs, the wings melting and sliding over her skin like liquid mercury to form gloves and boots that increase the power of her kicks and punches.</p><p>Yoruichi’s is a black cat but nobody actually knows what kind of weapon it can turn into. More often than not, Yoruichi sends it off as a spy because the thing is so realistic nobody can actually tell it’s not a real animal unless they get close enough to see the delicate wiring in its yellow eyes.</p><p>Nobody’s ever seen Kisuke’s either, weapon or otherwise, until a spy from a cybertech company snoops too closely around his shop. Then the other occupants get front-row seats to the bright red threads that extend from his hands - hands that light up with the many, <em>many</em> upgrades inside, a complicated maze of crimson circuits swirling beneath his flesh - and attach themselves to their target like strings on a puppet. At least he takes it out back before he literally rips the spy apart.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> Once upon a time, before Yoruichi was even born, there were five noble houses instead of four. But the fall of the Shiba Clan is never talked about, and most don’t even remember the details anymore, only that most were put to the sword and the rest were scattered. One of the runners in Kisuke’s employ - the many who scrounge through the Slums’s trash heaps for parts Kisuke might find useful - is a boy on the cusp of twenty who looks uncannily like the last Shiba clan head before the family’s collapse. He goes by Ichigo and doesn’t seem aware of his lineage, and if he notices the way Shinji almost always makes an appearance when he comes in with his haul, and his payment always ends up including several extra portions of food and some high-grade medical supplies and even a new change of clothes now and then, he never says anything. After they find out he has two little sisters to feed, a handful of toys get bundled in as well, free of charge.</p><p>Kisuke wouldn’t know a Shiba from a Shihouin, and Yoruichi’s family never bothered teaching her all the things an heir or even just an average noble-born child would’ve needed to know, so neither of them treats Ichigo differently because of his blood or background. They <em>do</em> treat him differently because none of Kisuke’s runners have lasted as long as Ichigo. Sooner or later, they disappear, arrested by guards or killed in a back alley scuffle. Ichigo slinks into the shop at fifteen and still comes around every week like clockwork five years later. He always shows up with a decent haul too, and once, Yoruichi follows him, just to see where he’s getting his loot because surely most of the trash pits in the area have been picked clean over the years? There’s always more added to them, but not at the rate Ichigo is scrounging materials. So Yoruichi follows him one day when he leaves and that’s how they find out about his sisters and the makeshift hole in the wall they live in, shabby-looking on the outside but clean and cozy on the inside and insulated well from the cold. That’s also how they find out about all the enhancements Ichigo has, because Yoruichi makes the mistake of underestimating him and almost gets beheaded when he disappears and almost shivs her from behind with a hand-turned-blade, teeth bared like an animal as his eyes burn with golden circuitry.</p><p>(The Shiba Clan had been widely feared, once upon a time, for their genius in the more explosive weaponry and their talent with artificial intelligence and robotics and other biological cybertech enhancements. It was why they’d been so swiftly sentenced to death when they’d come down on the side of the poorfolk. Even one Shiba would’ve been equivalent to having a small army in one’s arsenal.)</p><p>Ichigo moved faster, jumped higher, hit harder, than anything Yoruichi had ever come up against. The crack of his heel coming down against the ground shattered rock and cement everywhere, and the only thing that saved her life that day was her dodging ability and a quickly shouted explanation for why she’d followed him in the first place. Ichigo wasn’t unreasonable, even if he wasn’t entirely human. His enhancements explained how he could move further through the Slums for loot and still put down roots in the area. It took some coaxing and several dozen more months of coming and going from the shop, but eventually, he’d also admitted that he didn’t know where his enhancements had come from, he couldn’t remember anything from before waking up the Slums with two regular human toddlers who called him <em>brother</em> depending on him. The only thing imprinted in his memory were the directives: <em>1)</em><em> Take Care of Your Sisters, </em>and<em> 2) Survive</em>.</p><p>But he was the most powerful thing around for miles, and Kisuke was fascinated because the work done on Ichigo was only vaguely like his own, and far more advanced than anything the nobility churned out these days. Yoruichi didn’t care as much, but she liked having a new sparring partner, not to mention Ichigo was very easy on the eyes, and a few more years on him meant Yoruichi could appreciate the sight without feeling like she was preying on a child.</p><p>Ichigo kept coming back, and eventually Kisuke managed to wheedle Ichigo into getting a checkup and upgrades, especially when he started outgrowing a few of his joint ports. Yoruichi watched the two of them make moon eyes at each other, listened to Kisuke ramble about something Ichigo told him the day before, noted the way Ichigo’s eyes sometimes strayed to Kisuke when the man wandered outside without a shirt and his pants on backwards after too many hours in his lab, and she was almost tempted to lock them in a closet together.</p><p>(She doesn’t notice the way Kisuke smiles indulgently at her when she comes home from a trip into Seireitei with an icebox of fresh strawberries from the Kuchikis infamous gardens because they’re Ichigo’s favourite, nor does she see Ichigo blink and cock his head in new understanding sometimes when he observes the way she drapes herself over Kisuke, comfortable and relaxed, but never does it with anyone else.)</p><p>In the world they live in though, trust is more important than love. Yoruichi has trusted Kisuke since she met him, and Kisuke’s trusted her since she was down two legs and still flung herself between him and a thief with a knife who thought the shop easy pickings. And the day Ichigo brings his sisters over and lets them run around out of his sight is the day they know he trusts them. It’s only natural to offer him and his little family a room of their own at the shop.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> The day Yoruichi comes back with news of the Silbern Kingdom’s royal family <em>and</em> Las Noches’ royal family both being overthrown by several of their own noble families - the Ishidas and the Kurosakis, and the Coyotes, the Tu Odelschwancks, the Cifers, and the Jaegerjaquezs respectively - is the same day Shinji comes to them and tells them about the revolution movement that’s been in the works for a while now, about the remains of the Shiba Clan currently helping the Ishidas and Kurosakis take over Silbern, and about Ichigo’s own past - memory wiped for his own good because rumours of a Shiba child successfully integrated with his clan’s still experimental but groundbreaking technology had leaked, and if they’d gotten their hands on him, they would’ve turned him into their weapon. Better to hide him in the Slums, along with his two sisters who wouldn’t be of any use in a war for several more years, until they need him again, which they do <em>now</em>, because as soon as Silbern and Las Noches are theirs, they’ll be moving on to Seireitei post haste, and a two-pronged attack while the Gotei is still scrambling to defend themselves would hit them hardest, because for all that the kingdoms have been at war with each other for years, it had never been so direct, nor had their goals ever moved beyond poaching each other’s technologies. But for the revolution movement to succeed, they need Ichigo on their side, and it wouldn’t hurt for Kisuke and Yoruichi to join them too, technically Kisuke’s been their weapons-backer for years, and Yoruichi’s been their ear to the ground in Seireitei for just as long, and they’ll need all hands on deck. The kids can be left with Tessai.</p><p>Ichigo storms out. Yoruichi demands to know why they were never told before. And Kisuke surveys a tense-looking Shinji (who explains that it was supposed to be for their safety too - because Yoruichi was their only successful spy in Seireitei, and very, very few could match Kisuke’s genius, and it was just better to keep them out of the way) from beneath his hat before smiling blandly and promptly catching the man with a flick of his hand and five threads, unceremoniously tossing him out the window before he and Yoruichi both go to find Ichigo. It doesn’t take a genius to guess he’d returned to the hole-in-the-wall home he’d made for his sisters, and they join him after Ichigo acknowledges them with a jerk of his shoulders. They don’t speak right away, Ichigo sitting in stony silence, Yoruichi curled on one side of him still seething, Kisuke on his other, absently flexing one red-tinted hand in that way he only does when he’s contemplating murder.</p><p>They’ll help, all three of them. They don’t even need to discuss that. It’s high time for the upper-class to get their lives shaken up, the Slums are a disgrace, and if they have the chance to change that, they’ll take it, even if it means working beside people who have been using them for their own ends without giving them so much as a heads-up. Or in Ichigo’s case, <em>will</em> be using him since it’s pretty apparent he might not be the Gotei’s weapon but he is still very much the Shibas’ weapon, reserved for emergencies.</p><p>“Regimes come and go every day,” Kisuke remarks first, right hand fanning open, then closing, then opening again, crimson circuits shimmering along the vein lines of his palm.</p><p>“What a shame,” Yoruichi agrees with a grin that’s two-parts teeth and all-parts spite.</p><p>“…Three of us against three kingdoms that’ve just taken a beating?” Ichigo muses, but his eyes flare gold, and he’s smiling too. “Sounds like fun.”</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Bleach + UraIchi + Fem!Ichigo AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>FANDOMMANIAC2401 asked:<br/>For the headcanon thing if I'm not too late. Headcanons for FemIchigo/Kisuke ship?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Fem!Ichigo, Canon AU, Getting Together</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/188015204088/for-the-headcanon-thing-if-im-not-too-late">Tumblr Post</a>
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    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Ichigo keeps her hair long because of her mom. Masaki had long hair, and even if it’s not the exact same colour, Ichigo grows her own hair out in her honour, as a reminder of the one time she failed to protect her precious people and just because she’s never met anyone with hair as pretty as her mom’s.</p><p>The first time she gets into a serious fight with Shinigami, that dick Renji uses it against her. He grabs her hair, and taunts her with it, and in the end, she kicks his ass, but then his dick boss shows up and just about kills her. When she wakes up at the Shouten, she’s half-naked, wrapped in bandages, and her hair’s been sliced ragged, left in uneven strands around her shoulders where before it had reached her waist. Urahara is nice enough to cut and style it for her. He tells her he only knows how to cut it one way because a good friend of his used to wear her hair short. It’s cute enough, and at the end of the day, Ichigo would much rather keep her life than her hair, but she also locks herself in the bathroom later that night and has a good cry about it. It’s stupid, it’s just <em>hair</em>, it’ll grow back, but it still feels a little like losing her mother all over again. She gives herself twenty minutes, and then she gets her shit together because she has to go save Rukia, and Urahara promised to make her strong enough so she needs to get some sleep more than anything else right now. When she gets back to her room though, the rest of the Shouten is still silent but there’s a tray of tea by her futon, still hot, and too sweet to have been made by Tessai. Ichigo doesn’t even <em>like</em> tea, but it’s a surprisingly kind, amusingly awkward gesture from a man who knows too much and tells her too little. She drinks it all, making a face at the taste but appreciating the warmth that spreads all the way to her fingertips, and when she lies back down and closes her eyes, sleep comes easier this time.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Kisuke’s the one who carries her back to the Shouten after she defeats Aizen and subsequently collapses in the aftermath. He thinks it would’ve been easier if she’d been born a boy. She’s tall for her age <em>and</em> gender, but she feels more fragile like this, her shoulders narrower than her usual larger-than-life personality would suggest, her frame less sturdy. Even her bones feel more delicate. Then again, she’s still only sixteen and she’s already lost half her soul in a war she should never have had to fight in the first place, and a good chunk of that blame can be laid squarely at Kisuke’s feet, so maybe boy or girl, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. She’s light enough that Kisuke can carry her without difficulty, but her weight still feels like shackles around his wrists, tied to an anchor at the bottom of the ocean, like the worst of his sins given life, and Kisuke hadn’t ever thought that would be something he’d have trouble bearing until now. But the least he can do is carry her home, so that’s what he does. He takes her back to the Shouten and cleans her up and heals her– it’s a routine he’s uncomfortably familiar with these days. He doesn’t know if she’s ever consciously realized it, but he’s seen her naked enough times to feel like a pervert. He was Onmitsukidou, and he’s seen Yoruichi change in front of him enough times that the female body doesn’t make him blink, but Ichigo’s <em>young</em> - old enough to have developed curves, young enough that his hands shouldn’t be anywhere near her (figuratively <em>or</em> literally) - but there’s nobody else to do it, Yoruichi is always inconveniently away, so Kisuke keeps his eyes and hands well within professional range, runs a bath for her that takes care of most of the dirt and sweat and blood so he only has to make sure she doesn’t drown, and then whisks her off back to bed where he can bandage up what his Kidou can’t heal before settling down to monitor her reiatsu levels.</p><p>She remains in a coma for a month. Kisuke is the one who takes care of her, from fresh bedding to sponge baths to IV-fed fluids, even trimming her hair when it starts looking too shaggy (she’s growing it out again, so he doesn’t cut more than what he has to). By the time she opens her eyes, Kisuke’s just relieved she wakes at all, and it doesn’t seem like she’s (physically) much worse for wear so at least his caretaking skills aren’t terrible. All the discomfort in the world can be tolerated if it means Ichigo remains as healthy as she can possibly be.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> Ichigo doesn’t see or hear from Urahara or any other Shinigami for the next seventeen months, and she tries not to let it get to her. She still sees her human friends at school, even if she’s no longer welcome in a large part of their daily lives, and Shinigami probably don’t think a year and a half is all that long. Besides, at the end of the day, she knew most of her Shinigami acquaintances for a handful of months tops; that’s hardly grounds for eternal friendship. She’s hurt by their absence, but she keeps herself busy with school, with homework, with the part-time job she finds just to fill the hours in-between. She gets good at ignoring the fact that she knows where her friends go after school, knows where her sisters go, and that she can no longer follow them. Urahara doesn’t wear a gigai after all, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to. He probably has better things to do too now that the war is over and Ichigo has done her duty.</p><p>So it’s been seventeen months of mind-numbing (<em>soul-wrenching</em>) monotony, and then she gains a stalker. She would never have chased that thief down if she had known Ginjou Kuugou was so… greasy. She doesn’t just mean his hair either; everything about him oozes an oily sort of charm that sets off every alarm bell her mom drilled into her head about Stranger Danger, Female Edition, and it becomes clear very quickly that Ginjou is exactly the sort of man who just won’t take no for an answer. He follows her around, flirts like he thinks she finds him attractive, keeps inviting her out for a meal, even tracks her down at <em>work</em>, and Ichigo’s just about had it with him after he “bumps” into her while she’s walking home from doing the grocery-shopping, because she may not be a Shinigami anymore but she sure as hell still knows how to defend herself and kick a creep in the balls when he dares to sling a too-proprietary arm around her waist, as if he has any <em>right</em>.</p><p>As it turns out though, she doesn’t have to. Ginjou gets about half a second to touch her, still blathering on about having something interesting to show her if she lets him treat her to some ramen, and then he’s being ripped away from her, abruptly enough to tear a shout from him, and Ichigo spins around just in time to see Urahara twist Ginjou’s arm behind him at a painful-looking angle before slamming him face-first into a nearby wall.</p><p>Ichigo doesn’t think she’s ever seen Urahara so… openly violent before. She can’t stop staring for a long moment, because that casual, effortless strength is… not something Ichigo would mind seeing again. If nothing else, it’s clearly effective (and pointedly ignores the voice that says she isn’t staring because it’s <em>effective</em>). The look on his face though is positively serene, if you don’t count the ominous shadow that his hat is somehow casting over his eyes.</p><p>“I do believe Kurosaki-san has asked you to stop harassing her,” the shopkeeper says in tones so airily cheerful only an idiot would buy the act. Ginjou doesn’t reply anyway. He can’t. Urahara’s yanked his arm up high enough to let him simultaneously choke the life out of the guy, his hand about as movable as stone as it pins Ginjou’s wrist to the back of his neck and his neck to the brick wall.</p><p>“Hey,” Ichigo says, and then stops, because on one hand, this guy probably doesn’t deserve to be straight-up murdered, but also if anyone in Ichigo’s life can kill a human and make the corpse disappear, it would be Urahara.</p><p>But Urahara glances at her, then shrugs a little and releases Ginjou, only to knock him over the head with his cane, hard enough to send him crumpling to the ground in an unconscious heap. There’s a moment of silence after that, and then Ichigo remembers to be irritated because she’s no one’s damsel in distress. “I could’ve handled him, you know.”</p><p>It comes out sharper than even she intends, but the sight of him reminds her of how long she <em>hasn’t</em> seen him or any of her other Shinigami friends, and it’s hard to remain mature about it when one of them is suddenly right in front of her again. Urahara, because he’s Urahara, just rakes a too-discerning eye over her like he can see right through her annoyance to the root of it. His expression tightens with something Ichigo can’t name, but all he does is incline his head in acknowledgement even as he smiles in a way that makes her want to punch him. “Of course, Kurosaki-san, but what kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t interfere?”</p><p>Ichigo gives him the flat unimpressed look that deserves, Urahara’s smile twitches into something more genuinely amused, and for a second, it almost feels as if no time at all has passed since the last time they’d shared an actual conversation. Then Ginjou groans, Ichigo bristles irritably, and Urahara’s smile fades.</p><p>“Kurosaki-san,” He calls out before Ichigo can do more than turn away. “There are some things you need to know. But perhaps we can take this off the streets first? Come back to my Shouten; I will explain everything there.”</p><p>Ichigo turns back, scowling suspiciously at the blond, then down at greasy stalker. Great. She should’ve known; of course it would be Shinigami business that actually dragged Urahara out of his shop and into his first interaction with Ichigo after seventeen months of radio silence. But… if Urahara is willing to explain just what greasy stalker wanted to drag her into, Ichigo would be an idiot to turn him down.</p><p>“Fine,” She grumbles. “I’m using your fridge though. I’ve got ice-cream in here and it’s gonna melt before I get home at this rate.”</p><p>Urahara beams at her and hefts greasy stalker over his shoulder before ushering her to the Shouten. True to his word, he tells her about the Fullbringers who’ve invaded Karakura, and he tells her that the Shinigami have been monitoring the situation, and then he tells her he has a way to return her powers and soul-spirits to her. He shows her the sword, engraved with a bunch of intricate symbols she can’t even begin to decipher, and it thrums with so much power even she can feel it. She has a sudden epiphany that it must’ve taken even a genius like Urahara quite a while to make something like this, because she’d asked around, before she’d lost the ability to see Shinigami, and she knows for a fact that fixing her soul should’ve been impossible. The realization that Urahara must’ve been working on this for the past seventeen months goes a long way to soothing any fair or unfair feelings she had towards him, even if she also thinks he could’ve just <em>told her</em>. But she thinks that, and then she thinks that Urahara probably didn’t because he hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up for nothing. It’s stupid, but so is the way he eases the sword through her chest as gently as possible, as if it makes a difference at all when that first jolt of foreign reiatsu to her system still hurts like a bitch. She thinks she can forgive stupidity though if it’s coming from him. Not that she’ll ever tell him that.</p><p>In the aftermath, the Fullbringers disappear one by one, and nobody says anything but an increasingly manically cheerful Urahara gets a lot of wary side-eyes from the Shinigami trooping through Karakura over the next couple of weeks. It’s Rukia (Rukia who never so much as passed on a how-are-you, and Ichigo doesn’t blame her, but she’s never going to forget it either) who tells her later about Urahara kneeling in front of all the Gotei’s captains and lieutenants and begging them to help, who bowed his head through the Captain-Commander’s orders to keep the sword back until a powerless Ichigo has drawn out all the Fullbringers, only to immediately disobey as soon as he got the reiatsu he needed from them.</p><p>Ichigo asks, of course, just once, <em>why</em>. True to form, Urahara doesn’t give her a straight answer, he shrugs and lies instead, “Well it isn’t as if there’s anything else they can do to little old me in exile, is there?” But for just a moment, he also looks directly at Ichigo, his gaze steady and calm and unyielding, like there was never anything else he could’ve done, like choosing Ichigo over the Gotei was a decision made as easily as he breathed.</p><p>Much, much later, looking back, Ichigo thinks maybe that was the moment she first fell just a little bit in love.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> Somewhere between the Quincy War and Yoruichi and Tessai moving back to Soul Society and the kids deciding they want to experience high school and normal life at the Kurosaki household, Kisuke wakes up one morning to Ichigo cooking breakfast in his kitchen and realizes he’s sharing a house with a twenty-year-old college student whose Gargantas make for the easiest commute to and from school in the history of public transportation. He stands in the doorway for a long minute, just watching her go through the motions that have become routine at the Shouten for… months now. Ever since he survived the war by the skin of his teeth and ended up half-blind because Benihime is only a quick, crude fix when Kisuke doesn’t know the exact makeup of whatever he’s restructuring. He’d had to study that, and then get some hands-on practice, before finally re-restructuring his eyes one more time. Ichigo had been a big help. Kisuke had had difficulties reading, along with dizzy spells and crippling headaches, so even though she didn’t understand everything, she also spent long hours with him, reading out loud and taking down notes for him, cooking for him and keeping his house clean and even manning the shopfront for him when Tessai was busy with the Kidou Corps. And then, once he was better… well, apparently she’d just never moved back out, and Kisuke had liked the company (<em>has always liked her company</em>) that he’d obliviously taken her presence here for granted.</p><p>She turns around now, probably sensing him. Her hair’s almost as long as it used to be back when they’d first met, but she’s tied it up into a messy bun. She’s still in pajama pants and one of his shirts because she likes the larger size and she keeps stealing them and Kisuke doesn’t mind, he has more than enough.</p><p>Maybe he should’ve minded.</p><p>“Hey,” Ichigo greets around a stifled yawn. “Food’s almost done. Could you set the table?”</p><p>Kisuke makes an agreeable noise and starts pulling down tableware from the cupboards. The coffee’s also done so he pours a mug, and then prepares the tea with the water that’s just finished boiling. Five minutes later, they’re seated around the table, Ichigo grumbling memorized literature quotes into her coffee because she has finals next week, and Kisuke just… watches her. They’ve thrown the porch doors open because it’s summer and the morning breeze is nice. Ichigo has her back to it, and the sunrise that frames her head like a halo gilds her bright hair gold. When she finally sets her coffee down, she looks up and catches his eye, and even as her eyebrows go up in an unspoken question, the smile that blooms across her face at the same time is as much a reflex as it is genuine, like the mere sight of him is something to be happy about, and Kisuke is helpless to do anything but smile back.</p><p><em>Shit</em>, he thinks, far too late. <em>I’m definitely going to hell.</em></p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> “I’m definitely going to hell,” he moans into the table. Yoruichi, because she is first and foremost a terrible best friend, is too busy laughing at him to console him. At least she came prepared with the sake when he called her in a panic once Ichigo had left for class.</p><p>“Took you long enough,” Yoruichi chortles, like this isn’t a Big Problem. “Tessai thought for sure you’d realize she’s practically your wife-” Kisuke winces. “-when she went off to college and still went back to the Shouten every night. But I’ve known you longer so I figured it would take you a while before it clicked.”</p><p>“We are <em>roommates</em>,” He hisses vehemently, downing another cup of alcohol before pouring himself some more. “I’ve never- Yoruichi-san, I would <em>never-</em> I <em>wouldn’t-</em>”</p><p>“Well that was obvious too,” Yoruichi snorts, but her gold eyes are suddenly a lot less amused a lot more focused, acute and unblinking on his face. “But you know, if she’s old enough to kill for you, then she’s old enough to fuck.”</p><p>Kisuke freezes, and then straightens, and he has never looked at Yoruichi the way he does now, but there’s ice in his veins and a knot of flash-fire rage and black-fanged guilt clawing up his gut, and he couldn’t stop the crass words if he wanted to, “She was old enough to kill for me at fifteen; was she old enough to fuck then too?”</p><p>Yoruichi doesn’t even flinch, just pins him with a burning look sharp enough to cut. “Well you didn’t wanna fuck her then, did you? But she’s an adult now, and she can make her own choices, and I know you suck at human-ing so I’m gonna go ahead and give you a piece of advice in advance and hopefully save everyone a lot of needless drama - in general, people don’t like it when you make decisions for them because you think you know better. So before you panic even more and start pushing her away ‘for her own good’ but really actually because you freaked out about having feelings, maybe, just maybe, <em>ask </em>her what <em>she</em> wants.” She grins like a tiger that has its prey cornered. “Ichigo’s not stupid. Even I don’t know if she knows about your gigantic crush yet, she’s surprisingly closed off about personal issues, but let me just remind you, Kisuke - she didn’t sit at <em>my</em> bedside, or Shinji’s, or even Rukia’s, after the war, and you know full we were <em>all</em> laid out for days, if not from injuries then exhaustion.” She leans forward and snags the front of his Shihakushou to give him a hard shake. “Are you listening to me, Kisuke? She cares about you, and you care about her, and I have not seen you this happy in a very, <em>very</em> long time.” She glares at him, daring him to argue. “Even if nothing comes from this, even if you just stay friends, don’t you dare fuck this up for yourself. You’ve got a good thing here. She’s good for you, and she makes you happy. And it’s not a crime to be happy, Kisuke.”</p><p>She lets him go. Kisuke doesn’t move for a long minute, and this time, Yoruichi waits him out. “…What if I’m not good for her though?”</p><p>Yoruichi clicks her tongue and reaches for her own sake again, limbs going feline-languid once more. “That’s for her to decide. She’s got a decent head on her shoulders, Kisuke; if you really were poison for her like you seem to think you are every damn turn of the moon, she would’ve dropped you a long time ago.” She pauses to take a swig, and then she kicks him under the table hard enough to make him yelp. “Now quit being a coward, drink your damn sake, and then go home and be disgustingly domestic with your <em>roommate</em> when she gets back. And if after all this crap you put me through, you still end up hurting her, I’m gonna tell Kuukaku, and she’ll make you wish you were just dead.”</p><p>Kisuke thinks about that for a moment, remembers some of the antics Kuukaku used to get up to with Yoruichi, and internally cringes. “Right,” he sighs. Yoruichi rolls her eyes at him, and he sighs again. Well, he supposes he should’ve known better than to get any sympathy from Yoruichi. He also mulls over what she’s said though, and… well. If nothing else, Ichigo’s choices are her own. Kisuke’s manipulated her into a war once already. He can’t - he <em>won’t</em> - do it to her again, for anything.</p><p>He downs the last of his alcohol and this time dares to hope.</p><p> </p><p><b>6.</b> They never actually sit down and lay all their cards on the table and talk about it. It’s not in either of their natures; Ichigo prefers actions, and ninety percent of Kisuke’s words have always been used to deflect and manipulate. But, for Ichigo, the Shouten becomes home. She never moves out (and yes, she knew what she was doing when she packed up most of her belongings and carted them over to the shop), and at first, it was just to help because Kisuke was so badly injured from the war, but the longer she stayed, the harder it was to think about leaving again for good. When Kisuke hadn’t said anything even after he’d fully recovered, she took it as permission to stay, and of course that didn’t do anything to make her like him <em>less</em>. She enjoys his company, likes reading in his labs while he fiddles with his experiments, likes surprising him with new recipes, likes <em>being</em> surprised when he modifies or creates yet another Kidou spell for her monstrous levels of reiatsu so that it won’t blow up when she tries it. She likes that he always tucks her into bed if she falls asleep at her desk studying, and she likes that he trusts her enough to walk around without wearing his hat all the time. She likes that between her strength and adaptability and his creativity and cunning, they’re more or less evenly matched in a spar, and the harder she pushes him, the more thrilled he gets at having to work for his victories. She likes that he comes home one day with something both new and still familiar in his eyes when he looks at her, and a month later, on her birthday, he takes her halfway across the world to a rare book convention with a focus on Shakespeare, and halfway through that, his hand swings out to tangle her fingers with his own.</p><p>They never really talk about it, but Ichigo migrates into his bedroom one night and never sleeps in her own room again. They take things slow, honestly more for Kisuke’s benefit than her own, but she doesn’t mind because mostly, she just likes having Kisuke <em>there</em>, with her. He still treats her like glass sometimes, like something priceless he’s afraid to smudge just by touching it. Those days, Ichigo sprawls across him with all her weight and stays there until he wraps himself more firmly around her, usually dozing off while Ichigo works on a draft of her first book.</p><p>They don’t talk about it. But they don’t have to, to know what they mean to each other.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Bleach + KoyoIchi + SP AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>NOPIXIERA asked:<br/>In the spirit of OC appreciation Ichigo/ koyonagi from your SP!AU? Thank you for writing such lovely stories cross!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Swinging Pendulum AU, Getting Together, Possible Spoilers</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/188042436683/in-the-spirit-of-oc-appreciation-ichigo-koyonagi">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Even after Ichigo graduates and moves into his own little apartment, they continue meeting up. Not at first. Actually Ichigo’s the one who starts it. It’s been a month, and Koyonagi hasn’t randomly shown up at his door mooching food off him and pissing him off, and from long experience, Ichigo gets worried because not seeing one of the people he cares about for a while usually means they’ve either been kidnapped or they’re Up To Some Shit And Are In Way Over Their Head. So one day after work, he storms back over to the Academy, already halfway convinced that Koyonagi won’t even be there and someone’s going to tell him he’s laid out at the Fourth or something.</p><p>But no, Ichigo tracks Koyonagi down right to his office, and when he barges in, the inconsiderate asshole is sitting at his desk like everything’s normal and he’s even grading papers. Ichigo’s stunned. Koyonagi stares back at him, eyebrows raised in a way that somehow translates to equal parts perplexity, amusement, and mockery.</p><p>“Ichi-chan!” Koyonagi says, and Ichigo already wants to kill him. “My favourite ex-student! What a surprise! And here I thought you would be too busy taking the Gotei by storm to come see little old me again.” He cocks his head. “Did you need something?”</p><p>Ichigo glares, bristling with irritation, mostly because he’d clearly worried for nothing. “I don’t need anything from you!” He snaps. “But I haven’t seen you around at all! What’s wrong with you? I usually can’t turn around without you sticking your nose into my business, and suddenly you drop off the face of the planet? I thought something had happened!”</p><p>There’s a long moment of silence after that. Koyonagi’s face is now completely void of expression aside from the smile still frozen on his lips, and somehow, Ichigo gets the feeling that he’s actually managed to surprise him for the first time since they met.</p><p>It doesn’t last. Koyonagi blinks, his expression smooths over, and then he beams so obnoxiously even Ichigo’s instinctive urge to punch him is overridden by how fake it is. “Why, Ichi-chan! I had no idea you missed my lessons so much! Did I manage to instill so strong a love of Kidou in you that you just couldn’t wait to-”</p><p>“Shut up,” Ichigo sighs, already exhausted, because Koyonagi in this moment reminds him of nothing so much as he does of Kisuke when someone accidentally dredged up feelings in him that he couldn’t handle, and <em>why</em> are all of Ichigo’s closest acquaintances such fucking basket-cases in the emotional stability department? He sighs again and debates internally with himself for a moment, because he just <em>knows</em> Koyonagi will mock him for this too, but on the other hand, it’ll save him some trouble and a lot of anxiety, and that wins out in the end.</p><p>“You know where I live,” Ichigo says abruptly, because if Koyonagi <em>doesn’t</em> know, he’ll eat his Zanpakutou. “And yeah, my Kidou still sucks. So come by whenever and you can teach me and I can feed you, and that way I won’t have to worry you’ve pissed off the wrong person and gotten yourself killed or worse.” He scowls. “Don’t think I won’t come back and drag you home myself if you don’t visit on your own, understand?”</p><p>Koyonagi just sort of… stares some more. Then he smirks in a way that’s more a pull of his facial muscles than anything else, and Ichigo braces himself, “I take it back - I had no idea you <em>cared</em> so much.” He sighs dramatically. “Well I suppose, for <em>your</em> peace of mind, I must swing by sometime soon. Can’t have my favourite ex-student pining away in his apartment for me when I can soothe your paranoia.”</p><p>He pauses, and this time it’s Ichigo who’s taken off-guard when Koyonagi lets the mockery fade, replaced by something unreadable and distant and almost angry. The edges of his reiatsu flicker like serpents’ tongues against Ichigo’s own, and when he speaks, there isn’t any trace of his usual silver-tongued whimsy in his voice. “You shouldn’t care so much, Ichigo. It’s bad for your health.”</p><p>Ichigo’s eyes narrow, and he remembers the stiff way Kaien tends to carry himself around Koyonagi, the way the other teachers avoid this man when they can help it, the way he’s always sensed something dangerous - a threat that goes far beyond the petty cruelty and playful sadism he has no qualms showing, a threat that sometimes puts even Ichigo on edge, especially when they spar, when the bite of his Zanpakutou feels like serrated teeth in flesh - lurking behind Koyonagi’s civilized mien, like insanity and rage trapped in a cage that bends a little more each day.</p><p>Fucking basket-cases, all of them. Kuukaku once said his charisma drew in colourful personalities. Shinji told him his <em>leniency</em> put more knives at his back than he would know what to do with one day.</p><p>Ichigo scoffs, loudly, and turns to leave. “Fuck off. I’ll do what I want. Come by on Saturday. I’m making katsudon.”</p><p>He stalks out after that. He doesn’t look back, but as he crosses the front courtyard and out the gates, he can feel Koyonagi’s gaze burning into his back.</p><p>Ichigo’s never been as afraid of things that can kill him as he probably should be anyway.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> The first time Ichigo brings Koyonagi to a Shiba-hosted party, there’s an awkwardly tense moment of silence as all the Shinigami in the compound give Koyonagi suspicious looks. Koyonagi just smiles away like nothing’s wrong but even Ichigo can sense the tension, and he knows by now that there’s <em>something</em> going on with Koyonagi - it’s not every day the Kidou Corps Commander gets relegated to Academy instructor - but Koyonagi isn’t ready to tell him, and everyone can just back the fuck off or Ichigo is giving this party a miss. He can just as easily spend New Year’s in his apartment. Asuka and Rangiku and Gin won’t mind a change of venue. But then Kaien steps in, and even though his smile is a little strained when aimed at Koyonagi, he welcomes both of them in, cuts a warning look at all his clan members, and then leads them to the buffet table already laden down with food.</p><p>Later, when they’re left alone, Koyonagi murmurs, “I thought your cousin would’ve kicked me out.”</p><p>Ichigo shrugs. “He knows I would’ve left too. And I dunno what his problem is with you, but he likes me more than he’s scared of you. So.”</p><p>Koyonagi gives him an odd look before shaking his head with something like amusement. “Only you, Ichi-chan.”</p><p>Ichigo has no idea what that’s supposed to mean but that doesn’t stop him from grinding his heel into Koyonagi’s foot and stealing half his sushi. <em>Ichi-chan</em> his ass.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> For all that Koyonagi tends to drive him around the bend every other week, Ichigo enjoys his company. He’s smart, and strong, and funny not always at Ichigo’s expense but never afraid of taunting him either.</p><p>Ichigo’s never had any great loves, never had time for them. But he’s fallen into bed with a few of his friends - for the company, for the warmth, for the comfort, when the nightmares crowded too close - and he wasn’t in love with any of them but he <em>does</em> know he has a type, and it was never down to physical appearance.</p><p>Men or women, he didn’t care. But they usually tended to be capable - held their own in battle, knew their own worth, laughed at death and went back for more, and could look Ichigo’s Hollow in the eye without flinching.</p><p>Ichigo doesn’t know about the latter, but Koyonagi has the other three in spades, and the more time Ichigo spends with him, the more he looks forward to just having Koyonagi <em>around</em>, even if they aren’t working on Kidou. So he won’t say he’s in love with this man either, isn’t sure what it is or how he’s even supposed to identify it - nobody’s ever taught him that, and he’s already the sort of person who would kill and die and raise his blade against an army for a friend he’d known for three months tops; he can’t get more extreme for a lover even if he tried.</p><p>He likes Koyonagi though, cares about him probably more than Shinji would say is wise because Ichigo absolutely knows there’s something off about the guy. But ninety percent of Ichigo’s relationships have been like that, and he’s never cared about anyone with the expectation of that care returned in full. Sometimes though, Koyonagi looks at him the same way people like Hanatarou and the Visored and Toushirou did, Chad at the beginning of their friendship and Rukia on occasion and Kisuke more times than the shopkeeper himself probably knew - like they couldn’t believe Ichigo was real, and behind that, like they’d break if Ichigo ever turned his back on them, ever left them behind. And maybe it’s foolish and arrogant and stupid, but Ichigo never could leave the broken ones alone. It’s not that he thinks they need redemption or for him to wrap them up in cotton and protect them from the big bad world; it’s just that he looks at each of them and can’t bear to let them go, not when their loneliness reminds him so much of his own.</p><p>Koyonagi is a little like them, some of the time, when he thinks Ichigo isn’t looking, and it’s enough for Ichigo to set aside the apprehension he sometimes feels when he looks at Koyonagi. It might bite him in the ass one day, or it might not. But for now, he continues learning from the man and letting him come over for meals and bantering with him until he manages to drag genuine laughter out of him. And if he also sits back and admires the stretch of Koyonagi’s throat and the lazy curl of his grin that somehow lights up his whole face, nobody has to know except Ichigo.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> “Like this,” Koyonagi murmurs, and then steps right into Ichigo’s space, a wall of heat at his back as his hands come up and around, folding over Ichigo’s own and guiding him through the motions of a particularly complicated Kidou formation. The man has only maybe an inch on Ichigo so he’s a comfortable fit against him, but Ichigo freezes at the touch, and he can feel the flush creeping up the back of his neck. He barely registers Koyonagi finishing his very hands-on show-and-tell, but he immediately misses the warmth when Koyonagi steps away again, withdrawing far too slowly and not slowly enough, the callouses of his hands brushing up his arms like an inadvertent caress, and Ichigo has to suppress the ridiculous urge to lean into it even as a different part of him wants to claw his own skin off.</p><p>Kaien likes slinging an arm around him, and Rangiku gives him hugs sometimes, but Ichigo hasn’t had anyone touch him so… <em>intimately</em> in a long time. Which is dumb because he’s pretty sure he’s reading that wrong, because this isn’t even the first time Koyonagi hasn’t gotten more than a little handsy when he guided Ichigo through each Kidou spell, it’s just that this time tops them all. So it’s dumb, except when he turns and catches sight of Koyonagi’s face, the man is watching him right back, green eyes gone dark and hot and knowing, even as his mouth thins into a strangely contrasting grimace.</p><p>Ichigo’s heartbeat suddenly sounds too loud in his ears.</p><p>“…You’re not subtle, Ichi-chan,” Koyonagi says after a long moment of charged silence, and for once, Ichigo doesn’t even kick him for the nickname.</p><p>Ichigo blinks, takes a breath, and squares his shoulders because he’s never cowered when it counted. “Rude. The polite thing to do here would be to ignore it.”</p><p>Koyonagi huffs a breath of sardonic laughter. “Well, no one has ever accused me of being well-mannered.” He pauses, too-piercing gaze drifting over Ichigo like a touch of its own. “And what if I don’t want to?”</p><p>There’s another lengthy breathless silence between them. Ichigo takes in the hunger burning in Koyonagi’s eyes and recalls all the little touches Koyonagi’s been giving him that don’t seem so accidental or innocent on hindsight anymore.</p><p>So alright, Ichigo <em>is</em> kind of oblivious when it comes to certain things.</p><p>He narrows his eyes. “You better not make this weird later.”</p><p>Koyonagi smirks at that. “I promise I’ll still respect you in the morning, Ichi-chan.”</p><p>This time, Ichigo reaches out to smack him one, practically reflex now, but he stills when Koyonagi catches his hand and tugs him a step closer instead. A gentle thumb strokes over the pulse in his wrist, and Ichigo has to stamp down a shiver. Koyonagi says nothing, doesn’t push, <em>waits</em>, and maybe that’s why.</p><p>Besides, Ichigo wouldn’t mind falling asleep next to someone he trusts. It’s been a long time since he could, since anyone offered.</p><p>“Yeah, fine,” he says, and it comes out rough. Koyonagi’s smirk widens, and Ichigo rolls his eyes in response before yanking the man forward, one hand coming up to catch his shoulder right before he presses his mouth to Koyonagi’s in a brief but searing kiss. He pulls back in time to see the half-snarl of surprise and checked arousal, and Ichigo grins. “My place,” he says, and disappears in a rush of shunpo, fast but not-quite-controlled. Koyonagi tears after him, dogging his heels, and Ichigo barely has time to touch down on his doorstep and get the door open before Koyonagi crashes into him from behind, all but tumbling him inside before whirling him around again and pushing him up against the slam of the door. Ichigo gets a glimpse of glittering green gone bright with the flare of reiatsu, and then Koyonagi is licking into his mouth like he wants to devour him. Ichigo groans, shoves Koyonagi’s loose Shihakushou open, and loses himself in the other’s warmth.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> The seal glows ominously in the palm of his hand. Beside him, Ichigo slumbers on peacefully, limbs heavy with exhausted satisfaction, gloriously bare under the sheets, marked only by faint bruising that will probably be gone by morning. He sleeps half curled up against Senzou’s side like a cat, starved for touch and warmth even when unconscious.</p><p>He sleeps like he thinks Senzou can’t hurt him, so, <em>so</em> easily. Senzou stares at the seal in his hand, intricate symbols locked together, thrumming with power, ready to be applied at his leisure. His other arm remains around Ichigo, splayed over his back with a possessiveness he refuses to think too deeply about.</p><p>He thinks instead about trust. He thinks Ichigo is the sort of foolish he should hate, because Ichigo trusts him like he thinks trust alone is enough of a leash to hold Senzou back, like Central 46 doesn’t have the bigger claim by far, and the seal on his back still burns with a phantom pain.</p><p>Ichigo isn’t stupid. And Senzou’s let himself slip enough to give even the most clueless plenty of hints. And yet, Ichigo refuses to run away, continues letting Senzou into his life, into his house, into his damn bed, looks at him like he’s something important, something precious, like they don’t both know he’s a poisoned dagger in the dark, and Senzou should hate him for it because Ichigo refuses to heed every warning between them, refuses to stop, refuses to give up on him the way so many others have, and that’s a kind of warfare Senzou has no experience in fighting.</p><p>He should hate it. He’s <em>tried</em>. But it is shockingly hard to hate a man who refuses to do the same in return. Or maybe just this man. Just Ichigo.</p><p>Senzou sighs, closes his hand, and shatters the seal. The reiatsu powering it dissipates in a fluctuating spike of seething venom, and beside him, Ichigo stirs.</p><p>“The fuck is wrong with you?” He grumbles, cracking open one eye even as he throws an arm over Senzou’s waist, and Senzou wonders if he even realizes the way his reiatsu curls around Senzou like it wants to <em>keep</em> him. “It is way too early to still be up.”</p><p>“…You can’t save everyone, Ichigo.” Senzou says before he can think better of it, before he can even <em>think</em> it.</p><p>He feels Ichigo go still, and he braces for Ichigo to withdraw, to pull away, but Ichigo only stretches out, sprawling more of his weight over Senzou as he lifts his head to scowl at him.</p><p>“I can fucking try,” is his retort, all steel-edged determination, and then his eyes narrow, and his reiatsu ripples like the ocean, vast and deep and deadly, and Senzou should be wary of drowning in it, but all he feels is safe.</p><p>“Why?” Ichigo continues demandingly. “Do I need to fuck someone up for you? Are you finally gonna tell me who’s holding what over your head? Cuz you tell me and we’ll deal with it, okay? It doesn’t matter who it is.”</p><p>Senzou stares at him, stares and stares and wonders when the gods decided he was worth this man.</p><p>“Koyonagi?” Ichigo scowls again, but it’s his concerned one, heavy at the brow, soft at the edges, fierce all over as if he’d fight the whole damn world if that’s what it takes to free Senzou.</p><p>“Yes,” Senzou says belatedly, finally finding his voice again. “There are some things I have to tell you.”</p><p>Then again, Senzou’s never believed in gods. If they exist, they abandoned him a long time ago. But Ichigo is here, and Ichigo thinks he’s worth it, and maybe it’s time Senzou starts giving some of that trust back.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. HP + Hadrian/Orion + Naruto AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>PAIRP asked:<br/>Orion x Hadrian with Naruto AU! XD I kinda want to know how you’ll fit them into the hardcore ninja world.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Naruto AU, Reincarnation, Uchiha!Orion, Uzumaki!Hadrian</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/188124309228/orion-x-hadrian-with-naruto-au-xd-i-kinda-want-to">Tumblr Post</a>
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    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Okay so are they themselves? Dropped into the Naruto ‘verse? Or do they get reborn into Naruto canon characters? You know what, as themselves would be more interesting. But also wait are they even reincarnated or were they just born in the Naruto world?? We’ll go with reincarnation, Hadrian isn’t Hadrian without his dimension-hopping. So, Orion is born an Uchiha, because of course it’s just his luck to get tossed into a family full of blood-purists except without a Sirius this time. He’s born a handful of years after Fugaku, second son and relatively unimportant, but he almost gives his new mother a heart attack when he toddles into the kitchen one morning with the Sharingan already spinning in his eyes.</p><p>(His death had not been an easy one. He’d watched the only man he’d ever loved die protecting him, and it had been a relief to follow in a hail of spell-fire, even if it had been with the knowledge that Hadrian’s death had been in vain.)</p><p>They hail him as a prodigy, which makes Orion roll his eyes. It isn’t helped by the fact that he - thankfully - still has his magic, and after a few years of experimenting, he’s even able to pass off a few abilities as jutsus. His clan is proud of him - not even in the Academy yet and already wielding chakra like he was born knowing how. Their only complaint - something that would probably make his father tear out his hair in frustration if he was any less dignified, and drives the clan elders around the bend - was Orion’s utter lack of interest in holding up family honour. Oh, he doesn’t do anything outright rude, but even just acting himself seems to “tarnish their reputation”. He’s an introvert by nature - even years of knowing Hadrian hasn’t changed that - so acting the perfect Uchiha child whenever he goes out with his parents or on the few occasions other clans come to visit is not exactly a priority. He finds politics in general boring even if he’s forced to sit down and begin learning the ins and outs of clan laws very early, and working himself into other people’s good graces is just something he doesn’t do. He speaks too little even for an Uchiha, but when he does speak he’s too blunt even for a child. He looks at his new parents, compares them to Sirius and Remus, and finds them terribly wanting. He supposes they’re not terrible, especially since half the time they’re out fighting a war or attending meetings, but they care far more about propriety and prestige than Orion is used to, restricts Orion’s freedom more than he likes, and that puts even more of a distance between them. He cares about them, but only in a vaguely distant way. He’s fonder of Fugaku, whom he knows envies him a little for his skill with chakra (magic) and his already active Sharingan, but his uncaring attitude in just about every other department that a clan child should strive towards seems to appease him, and for the most part, they get along fine. It helps, Orion thinks with some amusement, that he has no desire to fight against Fugaku for their clan’s attention, even though he realizes that that seems to be a common practice amongst clan siblings. Their father certainly tries, remarking on how much farther along Fugaku already is with his studies and the clan jutsus, but Orion doesn’t care, and honestly, he’d make a terrible clan head. Fugaku wants it, and as far as Orion is concerned, he can definitely have it.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Hadrian is born an Uzumaki, and the one thing he absolutely loves about it is his hair. It’s a red so dark it could almost pass for black at night, but when he stands in the sunlight, it shines as bright as Lily Potter’s did.</p><p>Everything else about an Uzumaki is… not as great. Oh, the sealing that comes so naturally for their clan is neat enough, but he was already a sealmaster in <em>two lifetimes</em>, and while there are some new branches he can explore in this new world, he still prefers his own style, and it’s not long before other people notice. They think it’s his creation, his genius, and they’re all so proud of him, definitely Uzumaki and twice the prodigy, and that too is something Hadrian enjoys - the Uzumaki Clan isn’t as large as some in other villages, but they’re close-knit and full of love and laughter, and growing up in Uzushio, Hadrian wants for nothing.</p><p>Then of course, because his life is <em>just like that</em>, his home is destroyed at the tail-end of the second shinobi world war. This universe is full of soldiers and children conscripted as soldiers, and the foundations are so very ugly. Even Hadrian was already doing his part from the onset of the war, not even ten yet, by creating and improvising new seals for his village. Uzushio is kinder only that they do not send children to the frontlines unless there is no other choice, and Hadrian’s genius ensures he has a position with the Sealing Division within the safety of the village. His skills there at least are too valuable to risk losing on the battlefield.</p><p>(Hadrian is tired of war. He has fought three of them now, and the last one finally managed to kill him. He has no doubt Orion fell as well because even after so many years, or perhaps especially after so many years, Orion still looked at him like the moon rose and set at Hadrian’s command, and Orion was the ocean’s tide that followed its call.)</p><p>Only some quick thinking and liberal applications of some of the most complicated seals Hadrian has ever made on the fly manages to save just a little under half of his village. He creates a wide-range portal seal behind a defensive barrier interlocked with a delayed explosion ward, activates all three at the same time, and just before the light of the seal consumes him and all the villagers he could save (<em>far too few</em>), Uzushio detonates, taking all the invading Iwa- and Kiri-nin with her. Serves them right.</p><p>They materialize at the gates of Konoha, and over the course of the next several weeks, the remains of Uzushiogakure are shuffled between the hospital and a hastily sectioned off piece of land large enough to house them. Kushina bursts through the figurative gates within the day, crying and hugging everyone she can reach, tackling Hadrian too because they weren’t the closest within their clan but he’d been the one to teach her pretty much everything she knew of seals before she’d been forced to move to Konoha.</p><p>After that, there is a lot of bargaining and arguing, subtle accusations and even subtler threats thrown, but the first thing Hadrian does is erect wards powerful enough to stop an army, and so in the end, Konoha has no choice but to acquiesce to their demands. They still need Uzushio’s strength, and while Uzushio has never failed their sister village, as friend or comrade or ally, well, Konoha never showed up to aid them in their greatest moment of need, did they? So they make a home in Fire Country but call themselves Uzushio-nin, an island unto themselves with enough firepower to level half the country, and even Konoha dares not threaten that.</p><p>The war ends with Konoha - officially - the victor. A large chunk of Iwa and Kiri forces were destroyed, courtesy of Uzushio, and Uzushio, displaced and desecrated, bares its teeth and refuses to let the world forget them.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> Two years later, Hadrian is sixteen, a Jounin, returning from a mission and reporting in before making his way through Konoha in the quiet hours of the morning. Things are still a little strained between Konoha and Uzushio, but they share most of their missions, most of their information, they cross each other’s village boundaries as if they were one, and after Hadrian caught half a dozen ROOT members attempting to assassinate his village in the dark of night, Danzou had been tried, his delays of Konoha reinforcements to Uzushio dragged into the light, amongst numerous other crimes, and he’d been summarily executed for them. Hadrian doesn’t think he’s the only one who thinks Konoha feels just a little bit lighter in the aftermath.</p><p>For now, his feet takes him past some of the training grounds, and he can hear the distant thwacks of someone practicing their aim. Early training sessions aren’t uncommon, but it’s early enough that Hadrian feels a vague sense of curiosity for who it might be.</p><p>He finds a Konoha-nin, of course, easily recognized as an Uchiha, around the age of twelve. Judging by the hitae-ate tied around his arm, he’s already a genin at least. It’s rare though, for an Uchiha to be training in public, even if the place is void of people at this hour. Clan members usually use their own private training grounds, especially one still so young. His skill is plain to see though, every kunai thudding dead center into their targets while the boy himself dances easily across a sparse grid of wires. Hadrian only has time to up his estimate to Chuunin before the boy flips into the air and makes a <em>very</em> familiar gesture at the target boards. Hadrian’s breath catches as all the kunai fly neatly into the Uchiha’s hands, and the slight sound is enough to attract his attention.</p><p>Green eyes meet blue, rare on an Uchiha, not so rare on-</p><p>“Orion,” Hadrian croaks out before he can think better of it, and this time, it’s the Uchiha boy’s turn to freeze. Disbelief wells up in his expression, followed by a desperate sort of hope as he chokes out, “<em>Hadrian?</em>”</p><p>Hadrian doesn’t know who moves first, but he blinks once, and then Orion is in his arms, wrapped around him like a barnacle, and his body feels different, smaller and more slender, bones less sturdy, hair softer, but Hadrian doesn’t care because it’s <em>Orion</em>, and he loves his new family and everything they’ve given him, but sometimes he still wakes up in the middle of the night, grasping blindly for a man no longer there, and all he can think now is that this time at least <em>he’s not alone</em>.</p><p>Orion hugs him back just as hard, uncaring of the fact that Hadrian seems destined to be older in some way in every lifetime. He’s wondered, of course he has, because he knows dimension travel and time travel are possible, and if he’s been reincarnated, surely Fate or the gods or <em>something</em> would see fit to do the same for Hadrian. But he’s looked, and no one in Konoha has the same skills that he does.</p><p>Of course he was looking in the wrong place. He should’ve known Hadrian would be born into the clan that produces the craziest seal-happy shinobi in existence.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> Orion is a freshly-minted Chuunin. He wasn’t looking for a promotion exactly, but his Genin team was boring him, his two teammates didn’t like having an Uchiha on the team that so far outstripped them, and his sensei had no idea what to do with him. Orion’s even gladder that he decided to do his best in the recent Exams, because now it means Hadrian can request him on his team for missions.</p><p>They spend the rest of that first day together, talking about their respective new lives. Orion was all for following Hadrian home, but they both knew even the disappointing second son can’t just up and disappear into Uzushio territory for the night without the Uchihas sending out a search party and probably demanding recompense. So they spend the day together, talking, eating, Orion suggests a nap because it’s clear Hadrian just came back from a mission but Hadrian rolls his eyes and drags him back to a training grounds for a spar. Which is fun because they’re definitely more evenly matched in the ninja arts than they were in duelling magic. They don’t go all-out, but Orion enjoys showing Hadrian some of the Uchiha-exclusive jutsus he’s learned (no, he’s not supposed to, but also no, he doesn’t care), and he can’t help laughing when Hadrian begins teaching him seals.</p><p>Hadrian walks him back to the Uchiha compound. The guards stare, surprised and wary because Orion has friendly acquaintances in Konoha but no friends, certainly none that makes him so obviously happy. Orion wants to invite him in, but his family isn’t something he wants to inflict on Hadrian, and they’ll have more time together later. He almost forgets himself and leans in for a kiss, but Hadrian raises an eyebrow, equal parts amused and rueful, and even in this messed up world where children have adult rights as soon as they become genin, a twelve-year-old probably shouldn’t up and kiss a sixteen-year-old Jounin, even if they are from a clan with technically equal standing as the Uchiha. So Orion limits himself to a lingering hug, one that Hadrian returns with a hair-ruffle thrown in (”I’m taller than you for once!”), and then they part ways.</p><p>Word spreads like wildfire. Ninja gossip worse than the Hogwarts rumour mill, and Hadrian is a well-known name across most of the Elemental Countries, famed for saving his village and wiping out a third each of Kiri’s and Iwa’s ranks. Both villages labelled him S-rank before the war even ended, and while his first loyalty is to Uzushio, he’s also done quite a bit for Konoha’s defenses over the past year.</p><p>But even Orion is surprised when it’s Fugaku who corners him first the next morning, bright and early and looking forward to the rest of the day in a way he hasn’t for… literally his entire life here so far. Even his older brother, arms crossed and already frowning (honestly no wonder his face already carries faint stress lines), doesn’t dampen his mood.</p><p>Fugaku doesn’t scold him because he knows Orion isn’t going to listen. Literally the only one who still tries is their father, who shouts until he’s hoarse but never makes a dent in Orion’s disinterest and wayward independence.</p><p>Instead, Fugaku sighs and watches Orion pack two bentos before finally telling him, “At least you picked an Uzumaki. And of all the Uzumaki, at least you picked the best one. A Hyuuga might actually make Father keel over from a heart attack.”</p><p>Orion rolls his eyes as he hunts down a picnic blanket. Uchihas are so dramatic. Also, “Where <em>is</em> your mind at, Brother? I just made a friend.”</p><p>Even Fugaku’s monotone grunt somehow sounds skeptical. “Just… keep it in your pants for a few more years. And remind Uzumaki that just because you aren’t the Uchiha heir doesn’t mean we won’t come after him if he hurts you.”</p><p>Orion pauses and glances at him, and Fugaku scowls back, all gruff exasperation mingled with stilted concern. Orion rolls his eyes again, but he also smiles, reluctantly, because he and Fugaku may not be <em>close</em>, may not get along all the time, may have wildly different interests and opinions, but at the end of the day, they <em>are</em> brothers.</p><p>“Thanks, Fugaku,” Orion says grudgingly. This family doesn’t do affection much, so Orion isn’t used to it anymore. Fugaku looks even more embarrassed, and after a dismissive wave, he disappears back upstairs, probably for another few hours of sleep before his mission later today.</p><p>Orion does the opposite, making his way out of the compound and immediately brightening when he finds Hadrian already waiting for him. He has the same green eyes, even if everything else about him is different, and some part of Orion still can’t believe he isn’t dreaming.</p><p>“Hey,” He greets, bounding over on silent feet.</p><p>“Hey yourself,” Hadrian says as they set off down the road. He grins and holds up a mission scroll. “We don’t leave until late afternoon but it’ll just be the two of us. B-rank, retrieval, should take us two weeks tops. Sound good?”</p><p>Two weeks with just the two of them, away from Konoha and all its prying eyes? Orion grins back. “Sounds perfect.”</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> Four years later, Orion is Jounin with enough missions and successes under his belt to qualify as S-rank himself, and on the day after his sixteenth birthday, the Uchihas receive a formal betrothal request from the Uzumakis. Father takes one look at Orion’s expectant face and gleaming eyes and sighs like the world is ending.</p><p>“At least you picked Uzushio royalty,” He grumbles sourly as he reads over the terms. “And I suppose he does have… adequate credentials.” He looks at Orion again and then waves a hand irritably. “Fine. <em>Fine</em>. I’ll meet with the Uzumaki clan head within the next few days and make the necessary arrangements. Now get out of here. An Uchiha shouldn’t hover like a-”</p><p>Orion is already gone. He finds Hadrian deep in the Forest of Death, a simple ward keeping the hostile creatures away, lazily tracing elemental seals in the air to pass the time.</p><p>“Your father said yes?” Hadrian asks as soon as Orion drops down beside him on the tree branch.</p><p>Orion scoffs. “As if I would’ve let him say anything else.”</p><p>He pauses, then twists around in a fluid motion, and a second later, he’s straddling Hadrian’s lap, arms coming up to drape around the other man’s shoulders. Hadrian cocks an eyebrow, a smile already tugging at his lips as his hands settle on Orion’s waist. They’re finally equal in height, much to Hadrian’s disgruntlement.</p><p>“You’ll find me in our next life too, won’t you?” Orion demands.</p><p>Hadrian’s other eyebrow goes up. “We haven’t even finished this life.” He sighs. “And who knows if we’ll be reborn together again? Or at all?”</p><p>Orion tries to imagine it, tries to see himself in a world without Hadrian at his side, and… and he can, because he’s done it before, this life and his last. But he doesn’t much care for it, and he hopes he’ll never have to again.</p><p>“But if we are,” He persists. “You’ll try, won’t you?”</p><p>Hadrian’s grip tightens around him, and he draws Orion into a long, lingering kiss before murmuring against his lips, “If we are reborn together, then I’ll find you, no matter how far apart we end up. But you have to look for me too. Promise?”</p><p>Orion huffs and bites down on Hadrian’s bottom lip in brief reproach before licking over it to soothe the sting. Hadrian makes a contented sound at the back of his throat.</p><p>“That’s a given,” Orion vows. “If you exist, I’ll definitely find you.”</p><p>He feels more than sees Hadrian’s smile, but as always, it summons one of his own in reply.</p><p>“Then between the two of us, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Bleach + UraIchi + Fem!Ichigo AU/TBTP Era</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>KALIKO-BLACK asked:<br/>Anything with fem!Ichigo and Kisuke? Maybe a both-living-in-soul-society as Shiba Ichgio and Captain Urahara? Maybe an Outsider POV type thing? People trying to make sense of their relationship? (Btw I love your writing so much omg🤗)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Fem!Ichigo, Shiba!Ichigo, TBTP Era, Getting Together, Seduction: Ichigo Style, Hurt Ichigo, Minor Outsider POV</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/188189017088/anything-with-femichigo-and-kisuke-maybe-a">Tumblr Post</a>
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    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Ichigo makes captain around the same time Kisuke does. Isshin went MIA, presumed dead (no, he’s probably run off with another woman who fell prey to one of Aizen’s experiments), so the Tenth Division captain seat is empty. Ichigo doesn’t know Kisuke <em>well</em>, but she likes to think she does know a bit more than the average person on the street. She knows what everyone knows of course - former Third Seat of the Second, Yoruichi’s left hand, her best interrogator - but she’s also seen him around the Shiba compound on occasion when Yoruichi drags him along, and sometimes Yoruichi talks about him. Ichigo always listens raptly, and she’s never forgotten any of the tidbits Yoruichi casually brings up when she tells Ichigo stories about the missions she can talk about or her old days at the Academy or general life as a Shihouin. Ichigo’s pretty sure Kisuke doesn’t know anything about her beyond the fact that she’s a Shiba, and he definitely doesn’t know that she admires him. She knows he’s clever and strong, devoted to Yoruichi and not someone anybody with half a brain cell would want as an enemy. She knows that he considers himself a scientist as much as an assassin, and that his morals are… flexible, at best, but that what drives his actions - outside of work - is curiosity more than any kind of deliberate malevolence or innate depravity. Ichigo knows all this, and her gaze always strays to him the handful of times they happen to be in the same vicinity. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t notice; he sticks close to Yoruichi most of the time and doesn’t really interact with anyone else, and for a while, compared to him, she’s just a girl, albeit one with a ridiculous amount of reiatsu and a bright future in the Gotei. And for all that Ichigo is a Shiba, she understands discretion better than most of her family. Perks of being trained by Yoruichi. Sometimes, she thinks about approaching Kisuke and striking up a conversation, but he always seems so closed off, or he stumbles around like a fool with two left feet but eavesdrops on conversations with the effortless ease of long habit, and for the longest time, Ichigo simply doesn’t feel like she has any right to talk to someone so obviously better than her in skill. Yoruichi is different, Shunsui and Jyuushirou and Shinji are all different, because they’re her mentors and extended family first and foremost, but Kisuke isn’t any of that so Ichigo watches him, measures herself against him, and sets her sights on one day becoming his equal.</p><p>So, they’ve never spoken, not beyond polite greetings, not until Ichigo tears through the Academy in a year and climbs the ranks like she has wings, not until Ichigo is offered a captaincy with the support of half the Gotei’s division commanders, and as the two newest and youngest captains, the two of them naturally gravitate together whenever Yamamoto summons them all for the regular less formal bi-monthly captain meetings.</p><p>Meetings follow a pattern. Captains report in, the usual topics regarding missions and internal affairs are discussed, and then they’re free to mingle, which isn’t <em>required</em> but it is expected in order to keep up at least some friendly relations between the squads. And it isn’t as if either Ichigo or Kisuke aren’t familiar with some of the other captains. Ichigo grew up with Shunsui and Jyuushirou as her uncle figures, and Shinji and Yoruichi are family friends, while Kisuke owes most of everything he is now to Yoruichi. But the former three are older, and Ichigo is a captain now and she doesn’t want to be treated like the little girl they used to give piggyback rides and candy to. Besides, they’re busy enough chatting with each other, and it would be awkward for even Ichigo to cut in. As for Kisuke, he hasn’t had a real conversation with Yoruichi since she signed him up for the captain exams and forced him out of the Second. Things are stiff between them when they do speak, and he doesn’t resent her exactly but sometimes he sees her walking around with Sui-Feng following in her shadow the way he used to, and it makes him turn away.</p><p>So they both retreat into corners of the room, and after a few meetings, it eventually happens to be the same corner too. Kisuke’s brought along one of his portable experimental mannequins to fiddle with to pass the time until it’s okay for him to leave, and Ichigo’s reiatsu leaps lightly between her hands as she idly twists a Kidou spell into something new, twining the purple light of a Haien with the shadows of her own spiritual energy. She doesn’t look up, but she can sense eyes on her, and it isn’t long after that before Kisuke remarks, “The Shiba Clan is formidable indeed. I don’t think even the Kidou Corps has such a knack for… improvisation.”</p><p>Ichigo glances up to meet curious grey eyes just a bit too sharp to pass for guileless, and she’s never been shy about what she wants, so she grins a little and wiggles her fingers, making the spell flare a bit. “The Twelfth Division’s coming out with pretty interesting things too.” Just last month, a training mannequin that can produce low-level bakudou to counter hadou fired at it had been presented at a captain’s meeting. The First Division got first dibs, and Ichigo’s pretty sure Yoruichi pulled some strings and wheedled her childhood friend for the favour so Second got them too, but the Tenth will probably have to wait at least another six months. Ichigo’s not known for her patience though when there’s no real need for it, so she suggests impishly, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”</p><p>Kisuke arches an eyebrow, and some of the clueless facade he likes to wear falls away, replaced by an amused smirk. “You drive a tempting bargain, Shiba-taichou. However can I refuse?”</p><p>Half an hour later, Ichigo crosses the wrong two wires and Kisuke puts just a little too much reiatsu into a half-melted Soukatsui. The wall behind them blows up, and in the ensuing chaos and uproar, under the cover of all the smoke, the two of them sneak away over the rooftops like naughty children, half falling over with laughter.</p><p>Later, when Yamamoto eyeballs them and demands to know if they had anything to do with the explosion, they serve as each other’s alibi, swearing innocence up and down. Everybody knows they’re lying but no one can prove it, and as Yamamoto dismisses them with a long-suffering sigh, all of Seireitei seems to feel a sense of foreboding as Ichigo and Kisuke walk out together.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Kisuke finds an unexpected friend in the Tenth Division captain, and as a result, he has less time to hole himself up in his labs. At first, it isn’t even that he doesn’t want to; it’s just that it’s very hard to say no to Shiba Ichigo, who invites herself over to the Twelfth like she’s been given blanket permission and drags Kisuke out of the SRDI like it’s her right. Before Kisuke knows it, he’s spending most of his lunch breaks with her, and he even starts getting his paperwork finished on time every Friday because Ichigo has a habit of hauling him back to the Shiba compound for dinner on those evenings.</p><p>Kisuke’s always had a hard time saying no to strong-willed women, but still, Ichigo is different from Yoruichi. There wasn’t anything Kisuke wouldn’t have done for Yoruichi, up to and including changing his life’s career path when she announced he would. She was as much his closest friend as she was the noble clan heir who saved him from Rukongai, from starvation and certain death, and neither of them will ever forget that.</p><p>But Ichigo is different. Ichigo is colleague and peer and <em>friend</em> with no strings attached, and Kisuke’s never had that before in his life. She takes liberties with him that he could stop if he really wanted to, but she’s interested in his inventions in a way no one else is, and she’s eager to teach him her family’s brand of kidou in return even though he’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to. He asks about it once, and she only shrugs.</p><p>“Kuukaku-nee-san considers Yoruichi-nee-san another sister,” She tells him carelessly. “And you’re Yoruichi-nee-san’s best friend. I’m sure you know several Shiba secrets already even if you didn’t used to come over as often as Yoruichi-nee-san. Plus you’re not the type to go spreading around what you know, are you? Otherwise I don’t think Yoruichi-nee-san would’ve ever started bringing you over to our compound in the first place. Besides, I don’t teach you the <em>really</em> secret stuff. You need actual Shiba blood for that, so I can’t anyway. It’s fine.”</p><p>And Kisuke would think she’s simply too trusting, too naive, unable to keep her mouth shut, except as far as he knows, she doesn’t teach anybody else the way she does Kisuke, doesn’t spend half as much time these days with anyone except him. She trains her squad, spars with them and extends her favour over the potential recruits she’s handpicked from the upcoming Academy graduates and of course always makes time for her family. But even Kisuke - who admittedly has always been terrible with people - can tell that somehow, sometime when he wasn’t looking, Shiba Ichigo had decided to make Kisuke her best friend.</p><p>He… doesn’t mind it. The company is surprisingly welcome, and he didn’t even know he was lonely until he suddenly had Ichigo hiding in his labs from her own paperwork or barging into his office to bring him lunch. He used to have Yoruichi to talk to, but nowadays, he has Hiyori screaming at him every time he turns around, or Kurotsuchi constantly testing his patience, or his other squad members shying away from him because he doesn’t know how to handle them, how to <em>lead</em> them, how to make them like him.</p><p>Ichigo doesn’t seem to see any of his deficiencies though, or maybe she does and just… takes it in stride. She doesn’t mind when he gets an idea halfway through a conversation and has to write it down and ends up tuning out everything for the next three hours, and she only interrupts him to remind him of his other duties and to grab dinner on his way home. She spars with him willingly, even eagerly, and the more underhanded fighting style he prefers just makes her grin wider, a bloodlust that matches his own surging to the fore the longer they fight. He wins, more often than not, but her ability to adapt, the way she incorporates everything from new Kidou spells to fighting sequences that she’s only seen once into her own style, her limitless <em>potential</em> in the way she seems to grow stronger with every damn blow, is terrifying, and Kisuke absolutely knows that one day, probably soon, she will surpass him, and it will be glorious to witness.</p><p>Inadvertently, Ichigo humanizes him too. She becomes a regular fixture at the Twelfth, and it helps that their respective compounds are back to back so they can just shunpo over the back walls whenever they please, and it isn’t long before the Shinigami under their command follow their lead. Kisuke’s officers - from seated to unseated, science-inclined or otherwise - relax over time, more and more every time Ichigo breezes through the courtyard or asks Kisuke to introduce her to some of them. They always seem surprised that he knows anything about them, and he’s not sure why - he’s read all their files, and it isn’t as if he can’t see the training yard from his office. Ichigo does the same for him, introducing him around her own squad, and it isn’t long before their officers begin taking missions together more often than not, and mingling together in their own time as if their compounds are one. The day a rebel faction of rogue Shinigami rolls through and kidnaps the heir of a noble house, Kisuke and Ichigo are onsite first, and by the time backup arrives, the heir has been saved, and all that’s left are the lingering red and black flickers of their respective reiatsu and the not-so-subtle trail of destruction left in the wake of their rather one-sided confrontation.</p><p>At the end of the next meeting, Yamamoto spares a minute to inform him and Ichigo that since their squads are so close, all joint missions relating to research and exploration into Hueco Mundo would be handed down to them from that point on, and it would be their job to train up and round out their mission teams properly with Shinigami from both divisions. Kisuke stares at Ichigo’s equally wide eyes and wonders when they became the next Kyouraku and Ukitake.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> The first time Ichigo is frantically trying to meet a deadline and has to stay late into the night, Kisuke drops by with her favourite udon and a side of sushi, plus his own portion from the same restaurant, and doesn’t even seem to think he has to ask for permission before sitting down and poking fun at her time management skills and breaking out the chopsticks. Ichigo stares at him, not long enough for him to notice, but she also has to pretend to drop a scroll under her desk for a moment just so she can wrestle the manically thrilled smile off her face out of his line of sight.</p><p><em>Her evil plan is working</em>.</p><p>The trick to befriending Kisuke, she’s found, is persistence. It probably helps that she likes him so much, and she’s genuinely interested in the inventions his brilliant and slightly insane mind comes up with, but more than anything else, persistence is key. When he’s neck-deep in research, she knows better than to interrupt his thought process unless she absolutely has to, and she’s fairly certain she’s never overstayed her welcome to the point of irritating him. But she keeps going back, bringing him food, teaching him her specialized kidou, and listening to him talk, and it’s been almost five years now and she doesn’t think it’s only wishful thinking anymore that Kisuke considers her a friend.</p><p>And that. That’s enough. Anything more will come if it comes. Hell, she doesn’t even know if he’s interested in people in a romantic or even sexual sense; he’s certainly never so much as gone on a date with anyone after becoming captain - Ichigo would know - and she’s never seen him visit a whorehouse. Sometimes, she does look in the mirror and wonder if Kisuke thinks she’s pretty (then she tries to drown herself in the shower because <em>ugh</em> what a dumb thing to fret over, like a lovesick little girl). On occasion, she wonders if she should try to act more like Yoruichi - all effortless elegance and lethal grace and refined speech when she wants, with something independent and whimsical that reminds Ichigo of a tiger in the wild - because if Kisuke has ever loved anyone, it would be her. But pretending to be something Ichigo isn’t has never been her strong suit, and she’ll never be able to be the kind of sophisticated upper-class that most nobles have known since birth anyway. Besides, it doesn’t count if Kisuke doesn’t like her for <em>her</em>.</p><p>Friends though. Ichigo can do friends, and these days, Kisuke no longer stares past her the way he used to back when she was still growing up. Anything more will come if it comes, and Ichigo can be content with that, even if some part of her continues to hope.</p><p>“Ichigo?”</p><p>Ichigo blinks to find Kisuke watching her with questioning eyes, the udon half held out towards her. “Are you alright?”</p><p>Ichigo gives herself a mental shake. “Yeah, I’m fine, just trying to remember if I signed one of the reports I sent off earlier. Pretty sure I did, thank fuck.” Her hands shoot out demandingly. “Now gimme, I’m starving!”</p><p>Kisuke rolls his eyes even as a fondly amused smile tugs at his lips. He hands over the udon and shakes his head as Ichigo digs in ravenously. “And you scold me for skipping meals.”</p><p>“You sh’p way ’ore ’an ’e!” Ichigo immediately protests around a mouthful of noodles.</p><p>“What’s that?” Kisuke mocks cheerfully. “‘You are absolutely correct Kisuke and I shouldn’t throw stones at glass houses?’ I completely agree.”</p><p>Ichigo sends him a dirty look because that doesn’t even <em>rhyme</em>, but she’s too hungry to keep arguing. Kisuke only smirks back at her before starting on his own dinner, and for a while, they sit in companionable silence as they work through their food.</p><p>Ichigo sits back with a satisfied sigh when she finishes. “That was delicious. It almost makes the all-nighter I’ll have to pull not so bad.”</p><p>Kisuke leans over to pour some more tea for himself but he casts a curious look over at her as well. “Leaving your paperwork to the last minute is usually my bad habit.” Ichigo snorts, and Kisuke sends her an exasperated look. “What in the world distracted you enough that you put it off this late?”</p><p>Ichigo makes a face and slouches further into her seat. “It’s my birthday in three months.” Kisuke makes that faint forehead crease that means he’s confused, so Ichigo explains sullenly, “It’s my big one hundred. Apparently that’s an important age or something so Kuukaku-nee-san’s been dragging me out for dress fittings for two weeks now, Ganju-nii-san keeps asking for my opinion even though he’s thrown out like four menu plans already because they’re apparently not good enough, and Kaien-nii-san won’t shut up about if I’m sure I don’t want to invite this or that person. It’s <em>so annoying</em>.” She pauses when an odd expression flits across Kisuke’s features. “What?”</p><p>Kisuke blinks before shaking his head. “Nothing. Just…” He smiles, and it’s one of his false ones. Ichigo automatically scowls, and Kisuke drops it. “I just didn’t realize you hadn’t reached your hundredth birthday yet.”</p><p>Ichigo bristles. “Is that a problem or something? I’m not a kid anymore if that’s what you’re hung up on.”</p><p>Kisuke quickly shakes his head again. “No that’s not it. You’re a Shinigami captain, and you’re more responsible than <em>I</em> am most of the time, Ichigo, both our squads can attest to that.”</p><p>Ichigo scowls some more but lets her shoulders drop. “What then?”</p><p>Kisuke glances down at his tea before tipping a rueful smile at her, this one real and slightly crooked. “I suppose I just wondered why you would want to spend all your time with an old man like me.”</p><p>Ichigo stares at him for a long beat of silent disbelief before rolling her eyes hard enough to feel something in her skull twinge. “Oh my god, you’re not that old, you’re not even four hundred yet. Kaien-nii is just past his four-hundred-thirtieth, and he’d throw down if anybody told him his next stop’s a rocking chair on the back porch.”</p><p>Kisuke huffs a laugh, brief and soft and startled every time when it’s real, like he has to hide it and like he never expects it, and Ichigo has to bite back an instinctive smile in response.</p><p>“True,” Kisuke muses, and the uncertainty from before is gone. He raises an expectant eyebrow instead, and Ichigo beams upon hearing his next question, “Well it <em>is </em>important so I can understand the fuss. You’re not keeping me off the invite list though, are you? I wouldn’t want to miss your big day.”</p><p>“Of course not!” Ichigo says brightly. “Invitations will be sent out this weekend so you’ll get yours real soon.” She slants a sly glance at him. “You’ll get me the best present, right?”</p><p>Kisuke makes that half-stifled more-breath-than-sound laugh again. “Did you have something you want in mind?”</p><p>Ichigo considers that for a moment. “Mmmm… make me something.”</p><p>Kisuke cocks his head, and some of his hair falls over his eyes. He brushes it back and Ichigo wonders what he’d look like with it tied back, or what it would feel like if she was allowed to run fingers through it. “Make you something?”</p><p>Ichigo nods. “Something that will surprise me.” She grins. “I hear you’re good at that.”</p><p>Kisuke hums, and he doesn’t promise her a new invention, but he does lean back in his seat, his eyes going distant, and Ichigo can practically see the new ideas form in his mind. She suppresses a laugh of her own and gets up instead to clear away their empty food cartons before getting back to work. She’s not surprised when he pulls out a notebook a few minutes later, and for the rest of the night, only the scratch of pen on paper breaks the hush between them.</p><p>Three months later, Kisuke enters the Shiba compound dressed in his finest clothes. He feels awkward in them but he can’t exactly wear his uniform to this event, even if he’s fairly sure Ichigo won’t care. He drops off his gift at the table already piled high with them, and then a servant leads him to his seat, near the front where the guest of honour and her relatives will sit, and he isn’t surprised when Yoruichi drops down beside him a moment later.</p><p>Neither of them speaks. Kisuke glances over, checks automatically for Sui-Feng before remembering she probably hasn’t been invited, and then realizes he feels… nothing. Not the hot sting of jealousy, nor the twist of hurt at knowing he’d been cast aside. Instead, his mind wanders and he finds himself wondering if Yoruichi - who has a good eye for kimonos - had a hand in dressing Ichigo up, and then he wonders - with more than a little amusement - how big a tantrum Ichigo probably threw at being stuffed into something probably as uncomfortable as his own current attire. She doesn’t even like wearing her captain’s haori when she can help it. Kisuke should know - he’s the one forced to hold it for her on the streets just in case they happen to pass a captain who would care and she has to throw it back on in a pinch.</p><p>He blinks and meets Yoruichi’s gaze again, gold and and knowing and forever unapologetic, and he inclines his head in return. Neither of them speaks, but he supposes, when it matters, they’ve never really had to.</p><p>It’s another half-hour before the last of the guests arrive, and then the Shibas enter. Ichigo is last, and as soon as Kisuke sees her, he can’t look away.</p><p>Blue is the Shibas’ colour, just as gold is the Shihouins’, and white is the Kuchikis’. Ichigo enters, dressed in a shimmering dark blue kimono patterned with bursts of fireworks. In contrast, her orange hair stands out that much more against it, pinned back with glittering kanzashi but left free to tumble down her back like a river of fire. Her brown eyes are bright, her cheeks blushed a delicate pink. She sweeps in like a force of nature barely contained, every inch a lady of noble birth, and against the backdrop of the night sky behind her, she is <em>radiant</em>.</p><p><em>Oh</em>, something in Kisuke thinks in a daze, and beside him, he hears Yoruichi sigh, fond and exasperated in turn, but Kisuke doesn’t look at her because Ichigo catches his eye in the next moment and smiles, warm and glowing, and Kisuke can do nothing but stare back, utterly mesmerized.</p><p>Hours later, after the toasts and the seven-course dinner and even more toasts, everyone is free to mingle. Kisuke automatically sinks back into some nearby shadows, and for a while he gets some time to himself because Ichigo is busy thanking everyone for coming and making the appropriate amount of small talk. It still feels like no time at all when she appears in a burst of colour in front of him, flushed with a few drinks, breaking into another smile when she sees him.</p><p>She’s always so happy to see him, and Kisuke thinks he’s missed a few things over the past several years of their friendship.</p><p>“Kisuke!” She exclaims, and he realizes she’s clutching his gift, already half-unwrapped, in her hands. “These are fantastic, thank you!”</p><p>They’re a pair of hairpins, in her family’s colour, polished to perfection but purposely dulled so it won’t catch light in the dark, with jeweled heliotropes set along them. They’re not anything fancy, but they’re also not normal. Kisuke made them sharp enough to kill obviously, but the heliotropes themselves hide the real centerpiece. He blew up thirty-nine sets before he finally managed to get it right - a linked portal seal between the two, so that in an emergency, so long as Ichigo leaves one in a safe place and keeps the other on her, all she would need to do is send a spark of her own reiatsu into one set of flowers and it would teleport her straight to the other hairpin. Nothing - not an average bakudou, not one of the forbidden Kidou spells, not even different dimensions - would be able to prevent her from being transported to safety. The hairpins are designed to tear through literally anything in its way, and they’re probably one of Kisuke’s greatest achievements to date. It’s the only one of its kind, and as soon as Ichigo touched them, her passive reiryoku came into contact with them, and they now respond only to her.</p><p>He wrote down the explanation of course, Kidou-locked for her eyes only, and Ichigo beams at him now, clearly delighted.</p><p>“Here, help me put it on,” She says, already yanking out her kanzashi.</p><p>Kisuke can practically see Kuukaku’s wrath manifest a physical form from across the courtyard, and he pointedly pretends not to notice. Instead, he sighs rather helplessly even as something thrills inside him, possessive and smug. He firmly ignores it, focusing on tucking back the stray orange strands of Ichigo’s hair before clipping one of the hairpins through. They’re terribly lacking compared to her kanzashi but Ichigo doesn’t seem to care.</p><p>“The other one?” Kisuke asks, glancing down, only to blink when Ichigo catches one of his hands and presses the second hairpin into his palm.</p><p>Kisuke looks up. Ichigo smiles back, quiet and steady and resolute even as she withdraws her own hands again and takes a step back.</p><p>“Keep it safe for me, okay?” She asks, and Kisuke can’t find any words for a moment. But Ichigo doesn’t seem to need an answer, one hand rising to brush over the hairpin instead before swirling around in a neat spin. “How do I look? You haven’t said yet.”</p><p>Kisuke… doesn’t really plan on saying it. Somehow, entirely unlike him, it slips out anyway.</p><p>“Beautiful,” He says, voice just a touch too hoarse. “You look beautiful.”</p><p>Ichigo’s eyes go wide. And Kisuke can’t possibly have been the only one to say it, because she shines like a phoenix tonight, and it’s not even a particularly creative compliment; she’s almost certainly heard better. But she seems so very surprised anyway, and then she blushes to the tips of her ears, floundering for words in a way that isn’t at all like her.</p><p>“Thanks,” She finally mumbles, ducking her head for a moment before straightening just as quickly, something like defiance and challenge squaring her shoulders as she studies him searchingly for all of two seconds before reaching out and catching his arm. “Come on, the fireworks will start soon. We should get a good spot. The roof on the eastern side is best.”</p><p>She drags him off, and Kisuke goes willingly. Later, they sit shoulder to shoulder with the crackle of multi-coloured fireworks exploding overhead. Ichigo smiles  up at the sky, and Kisuke watches her out of the corner of his eye, recalling all their moments together over the past five years, wondering if she really has felt… <em>more</em> for him than he’s ever realized.</p><p>She’s a Shiba though. Half the noble guests here tonight brought along their sons and nephews for no other reason than because Ichigo will have to marry well one day. If this were a race, Kisuke knows he has already lost. But, they’re friends. Ichigo is actually probably his only friend, Yoruichi aside, and that will have to be good enough. Ichigo isn’t the type to cast anyone aside even after she marries, which won’t be for a while yet anyway, and if nothing else, the Shibas won’t ever wed her off to someone who would dictate who she can see and what she can do. So Kisuke will get to keep her friendship, and so long as he has that, then he can be content.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> In this world, Kisuke does not create the Hougyoku. Oh, he stumbles on the idea, even starts on the project, but when it becomes clear that he’s going to have to more or less dissect the souls of dozens if not hundreds of souls, Pluses <em>and </em>Hollows alike, because he isn’t going to figure this out without seeing what happens, Kisuke thinks of Ichigo, thinks of what she would think if she knew, and… he stops.</p><p>He wants to know. He always wants to know, anything and everything he doesn’t already. But this, this is what Ichigo would consider cruel, this is <em>wrong</em>, and Kisuke’s curiosity over the outcome of this little experiment isn’t worth Ichigo’s disappointment.</p><p>So he sighs and mentally shelves this line of research, at least until he can figure out a better way to do it, and then he scraps the project. There are plenty of other areas he can turn his mind to after all. Besides-</p><p>“Kisuke!” Ichigo bursts into his personal labs, dragging a disheveled-looking Akon behind her. “I sent your Third Seat to the Fourth!”</p><p>Kisuke sighs. “What did he do now?”</p><p>She scowls at him and hauls Akon up front and center. Ichigo’s on the tall side, only a few inches shorter than Kisuke, so even standing straight, Akon only reaches her chest-height.</p><p>“He tried to experiment on Akon!” She snaps, and Kisuke frowns, because he’s pretty sure this would be the seventh time Kurotsuchi’s tried to overstep the boundaries Kisuke set. It isn’t as if he even has that many, and surely <em>don’t experiment on your fellow squad members</em> isn’t too difficult to remember?</p><p>He sighs again and glances down at Akon, who looks slightly flustered under Ichigo’s fussing. Kisuke arches an amused eyebrow, and Akon glowers at him.</p><p>Brat.</p><p>Still, Ichigo’s taken a liking to Akon, and aside from time in the labs, the kid usually haunts the Tenth more than the Twelfth these days.</p><p>“How about the Academy?” Kisuke suggests abruptly, and Ichigo blinks at him. “He isn’t cleared for missions or anywhere other than the SRDI since he hasn’t passed the Shinigami requirements at the school, but if he goes, and graduates, I’ll be able to transfer him over to the Tenth.” He looks at Akon again. “You like it better over there anyway, don’t you? But of course, you’ll still have lab space here.”</p><p>Akon looks openly astonished for a split second, then wheels around to stare up at Ichigo. “Shiba-taichou-?”</p><p>Ichigo grins and ruffles his hair. “If it’s what you want, that’s fine by me! My family can even put in a recommendation, and don’t you worry about books and supplies. The next entrance exam is coming up too so this is perfect timing!”</p><p>She begins ushering him out the door again, Akon hanging on to her every word, but she pauses and glances back just before she leaves.</p><p>Kisuke inclines his head. “I’ll take care of it.” He considers that for a moment before adding, “Permanently.”</p><p>Ichigo nods briskly, her smile going grim and dark for a split second, and then she turns her attention back to Akon as they continue on their way.</p><p>Kisuke listens to their voices fade, absently tapping the flat of his Zanpakutou against his thigh.</p><p>Well, he supposes Kurotsuchi was never going to work out anyway. The man’s even had the audacity to make noises - albeit relatively muted ones whenever Kisuke’s around - about getting his hands on Ichigo, such an anomaly of natural-born reiatsu even for a Shiba, and Kisuke’s seen the way the other man’s eyes gleam and follow Ichigo around when she’s at the Twelfth. And that just isn’t acceptable. Of course, on one hand, Ichigo would crush him if he ever tries anything, but on the other, it’s really only a matter of time before Kurotsuchi’s greed gets the better of him, and why bother Ichigo with this issue when Kisuke can prevent it?</p><p>It’s a shame. Kurotsuchi isn’t quite at Kisuke’s level of genius, and somehow, he’s even more obsessive about his various scientific interests than Kisuke, but he would’ve helped boost the SRDI to greater heights. Kisuke draws the line at harming those under his protection though. He’s given Kurotsuchi plenty of chances to curb his more… excessive inclinations. This time will be the last time.</p><p>A week later, Kisuke makes his way out of the Maggots’ Nest, and Kurotsuchi doesn’t actually stop screaming threats at him until there’s too many walls and doors between them for Kisuke to hear him.</p><p>Yoruichi is waiting outside, one eyebrow going up when she sees him come out alone. “I thought you had high hopes for that one?”</p><p>Kisuke smiles blandly back at her. “Yes, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>Kisuke shrugs and turns in the direction of his division compound. “You know I don’t like it when people touch my stuff, Yoruichi-san.”</p><p>His squad is <em>his</em>. His people are <em>his</em>. Ichigo isn’t, not the way he’s slowly realizing he’d prefer. But she’s still under his protection, even if she doesn’t need it, and Kisuke would throw away a lot more than a single asset to keep her safe.</p><p>Later that same day, Ichigo brings him a cake, and Kisuke has to laugh when he sees that the icing reads, <em>Sorry You Lost Your Best Creepy Scientist</em>.</p><p>“I’ll find others for my department,” Kisuke assures as he bites into his first slice.</p><p>Ichigo scoffs and slaps down a stack of files. “’Course you will, and I’m gonna help. You and Kurotsuchi and Akon can’t be the only science geeks in Soul Society. So, how ’bout we write up a proposal for the old man? A separate exam for people who don’t necessarily want to become Shinigami but might be interested in a research grant or something? Maybe we can even create a new branch of the Academy, something that focuses on whatever basics you would need to apply to your department. They can still be required to take the core subjects, but if they decide they want to enter the SRDI, you can even set a curriculum for them, since you’d know best what they’d need. As for the SRDI, why not make it separate from the Gotei but still attached, like the Onmitsukidou and the Kidou Corps. Right now, I’m pretty sure most people still think of it as your side-hobby or something. But in the long run, if we do this right, I think even Central 46 would see the benefits of starting something like this.”</p><p>Kisuke just… stares at her for a minute. He looks at the plans that Ichigo has already begun drafting up, that she’s taken the <em>time</em> to think of Kisuke and consider what he might want and how to help him further his ambitions, and then he looks back at her again, and he promises himself then that if she ever expresses even the slightest unhappiness with whoever she ends up married to one day, he’ll carve them up into as many pieces as physically <em>and</em> spiritually possible because this woman deserves the world.</p><p>“That’s genius,” He says faintly, and Ichigo beams. She shoves the files at him, shuffles their cake off to the side, and then they spend the rest of the day lobbing ideas back and forth for a system Kisuke can’t wait to put into practice.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> Five years later, the Mission happens. The Ninth Division goes to investigate the disappearances out in Rukongai, then an irritated Hiyori heads out when a researcher is requested, and then the emergency meeting is called when the entire investigation team’s reiatsu signatures disappear.</p><p>“I’ll go,” Ichigo repeats once the meeting is over and the backup team is about to head out. “Don’t worry, Kisuke, I’ll get Hiyori back alive and in one piece.”</p><p>Kisuke grimaces but nods. Hiyori might as well be Ichigo’s lieutenant as well at this point, and he knows Ichigo will do everything she can to retrieve Hiyori.</p><p>“You stay safe too,” Kisuke reminds her, gaze flicking briefly to the hairpin he’s never seen her go out without. The other remains with him, always.</p><p>Ichigo nods back determinedly, and then she leaves.</p><p>If Kisuke had known what would happen, he would’ve tied her up and sat on her to make sure she didn’t leave Seireitei that night. Or at the very least, he would’ve gone with her, orders be damned.</p><p>But in this world, in this time, he trusts Ichigo as much as he trusts himself, and if there’s even the slightest possibility of returning Hiyori and everyone else alive, he believes Ichigo will do it. So in this world, he does not go after them, fiddling listlessly with various projects in his labs instead as he waits for word of their return.</p><p>He doesn’t get word. Instead, a shriek rings high and clear in the far, far distance, and Kisuke skids outside just in time to see the blazing light of fireworks burning on the horizon like it’s set the sky on fire.</p><p>His stomach drops. Ichigo had told him about this once - a canister of specialized fireworks that serves as an SOS, carried by every Shiba, Shinigami or otherwise, released only in worst-case scenarios when reinforcements are desperately needed.</p><p>In the distance, from the direction of the Shiba compound, a muffled uproar stirs, one that’s closely followed by a commotion at the Thirteenth. Then there’s a displacement of air and Ichigo’s lieutenant is suddenly beside him. Kisuke glances over and isn’t at all surprised to see the ice in Koyonagi’s face. Ichigo’s probably the last person anyone thought would require <em>reinforcements</em>. That she thinks she needs it when she already has three other captains and two lieutenants with her makes the whole situation even worse.</p><p>“I’ll take a team and go,” Koyonagi says abruptly, and it isn’t a question. Unlike Hiyori, Koyonagi obeys one person and one person alone. “You stay here.” He glares, pre-empting Kisuke’s protest. “If she uses that portal seal-” Because of course if anyone would realize the significance of Ichigo suddenly wearing a hair accessory everywhere since five years ago, it would be the former Kidou Corps Commander. “-because she needs medical attention, what use would it be if you’re in the middle of Rukongai?”</p><p>He’s gone in the next second, and Kisuke has to grit his teeth and take a fortifying breath to stop himself from going after him. The urge tears at him anyway. He isn’t used to staying back, doing nothing, feeling completely useless.</p><p>He should’ve gone with her.</p><p>Hours later, in the early light of dawn with half the city a bustling hive of tense activity and both the Tenth and Twelfth Divisions on high alert, Kisuke gets only a moment’s warning, the hairpin he’s been cradling in his hands rippling with Ichigo’s familiar abyssal reiatsu before a burst of light whites out the room.</p><p>Kisuke has to take a moment to blink the spots from his sight, and then he takes all of three seconds to take in the sudden influx of bodies in his lab - Muguruma and Kuna, unconscious and locked down with so many Kidou binding spells that they look about ready for transport to prison, with Ushouda standing over them, Aikawa and Ootoribashi supporting each other but at least they’re also on their feet, Yadoumaru, her blade still drawn and  bloodied, and Hirako, hair and uniform splashed with blood but with enough strength to support Ichigo, who’s half-collapsed against the blond, a bloodstained hairpin still clutched in one white-knuckled grip.</p><p>Kisuke has eyes for no one else. “Ichigo!”</p><p>He hasn’t been idle in the past several hours, setting out everything he thought he might need just in case Ichigo really did come back in serious need of medical aid. Hirako relinquishes Ichigo to him, but Kisuke barely has time to lay her out on a padded table before she convulses, once, twice, and then she <em>screams</em>.</p><p>“Tie her down!” Hirako barks, and Kisuke almost slits the other captain’s throat for that as Ushouda cuffs her to the table. The Fifth Division captain gives a jerky shake of his head. “She’s been infected by- by whatever the hell Aizen was doin’. He got Kensei and Mashiro too, but they’re out for now.” He grimaces, a baring of teeth that looks equal parts angry and scared. “Aizen said somethin’ about them bein’ Hollowfied?” Kisuke’s blood runs cold. “The rest of Kensei’s team is dead, but these two ambushed us, and I don’t think they knew who we were. Ichigo managed ta set off her flare before slippin’ past them and attackin’ Aizen. The rest of us focused on subduin’ Kensei and Mashiro. And Ichimaru and Tousen were with them, on Aizen’s side. We managed ta get them too. Kaien and Koyonagi and half the Shiba Clan are on scene now. Hiyori’s fine as well and insisted on stayin’.” He looks like he wants to cringe as Ichigo thrashes futilely and screams again like someone’s carving out her insides with a rusty spoon. “Can ya do anythin’ for her?!”</p><p>Kisuke swears under his breath, hands already glowing, trying to get an actual reading on whatever the hell is happening with Ichigo’s body. His ears ring with the shrill sounds of Ichigo in obvious agony, and he has to check to make sure his hands aren’t shaking because they certainly feel like they are.</p><p>“Did he have an orb on him?” Kisuke shouts over Ichigo’s screams. “Aizen!” And he hopes the man is still alive, if only because Kisuke dearly wishes to strangle the traitor with his own <em>spine</em>. “About the size of a fist, blue-”</p><p>“Yeah, I have it,” Yadoumaru steps forward, yanking an eerie blue-green orb from a pocket of her Shihakushou. “Will it help reverse this?”</p><p>Kisuke has no answers for her, and he doesn’t have time either before Ichigo’s screams abruptly cut off, and Kisuke just manages to disintegrate the Kidou cuffs and turn her onto her side before she throws up a viscous white substance all over the floor.</p><p>“’isuke,” She slurs, feverish recognition surfacing for a moment once she manages to stop. “’isuke, it <em>’urts</em>-”</p><p>“I know,” Kisuke murmurs, helping her drink some water. “I know, sweetheart. I’ll fix it, I promise. Can you tell me what happened when you fought Aizen?”</p><p>He gets a garbled recount of an illusion-type Zanpakutou - out of sight, Hirako kicks something over - that Ichigo managed to overcome thanks to her overwhelmingly high levels of reiatsu combined with something inside her - something new and bloodthirsty and ruthless - that had taken over her body long enough to shatter Aizen’s influence. They’d destroyed five districts in their battle but Ichigo had come out on top in the end.</p><p>She stops, choking on a cry as another wave of pain courses through her, clawing at her own skin, and her usual brown eyes flash yellow-on-black. Kisuke holds her down through it, and then he forgets himself and reaches up to cradle her face with his hands. Ichigo meets his gaze only after a dizzying moment of confusion where she doesn’t even seem to know where she is anymore, but she seems to calm too at his touch, just a bit.</p><p>“I’m going to knock you out,” Kisuke says quietly. “It’s not doing you any good to stay awake right now. But I’ll make this better, Ichigo, I promise. Trust me.”</p><p>Ichigo only manages a weak smile in response, but her eyes are steady on his, and she doesn’t so much as twitch as a spell washes over her and puts her to sleep.</p><p>Kisuke takes a step back. When he turns, everyone who’s still awake is staring, but he ignores them, directing Ushouda to put Muguruma and Kuna onto two of the other tables before holding out a hand for the orb.</p><p>The Hougyoku. To think, where even Kisuke stopped, Aizen Sousuke did not. He wonders just how many the other man has killed for this to actually work.</p><p>Out loud, he says curtly, “I need peace and quiet. You may stay, but stay out of my way. If you’re injured, go to the Fourth. I have no time for you right now.”</p><p>And then he turns and gets to work.</p><p>-0-</p><p>It takes Kisuke a week. He doesn’t sleep, barely eats, and he doesn’t leave his labs until Ichigo - and Muguruma and Kuna - is breathing easy again.</p><p>He checks Ichigo one more time, sets a monitor in case she wakes while he’s gone, spares a moment to brush fingers over the two hairpins he’d washed and set on the side table, and then he heads upstairs, makes his way out of the SRDI, and promptly walks straight into what looks like a war.</p><p>At least half his officers plus the Tenth’s are arrayed across the compound walls, bristling with weapons, patrolling like they’ve somehow become the target of a siege. Kisuke stares, double-checks to make sure he isn’t hallucinating from exhaustion, and then shunpos directly over to where he can sense Hiyori’s reiatsu signature.</p><p>“What is going on?” He asks, all out of patience, with not enough energy to waffle around the issue.</p><p>Hiyori startles, jumping half a foot, hand falling to her Zanpakutou, but she relaxes when she sees him. He’s never going to be her favourite person, but over the years, they’ve at least built a decent working relationship, especially once he started taking his position more seriously and not just focusing all his attention on establishing the SRDI.</p><p>“Gimme some warnin’!” She growls, but doesn’t react beyond that. “A week ago, Central 46 came out with an execution order for Ichigo and the other two,” She reports with a scowl, nodding emphatically when Kisuke slices a sharp glance down at her. “Guards came and tried ta storm our compound ta drag ’em out. Obviously we weren’t just gonna <em>let</em> them. We shut the gates, knocked out anyone who tried ta force their way in anyway, and dumped them back outside. The Fifth, Eighth, and Thirteenth even sent over help halfway inta the second day. A couple days after that, assassins started tryin’ ta sneak in.” She grins, looking positively feral. “Koyonagi stabbed the first one he caught in the <em>face</em>. Those ones, we returned dead.” She shook her head. “The last attack was yesterday mornin’. Word’s come down that Central 46 was influenced by Aizen’s Zanpakutou or somethin’, and since Ichigo left ’im alive, it’s still affectin’ ’em. Unohana-taichou’s been workin’ on it though. That might be why they haven’t sent anymore guards, but we’re all still keepin’ a lookout. Oh yeah, and I heard the Shiba Clan’s about one wrong word away from rebellion, and rumour has it that the Shihouin Clan’s willin’ ta follow. So for now, nobody’s doin’ anythin’ but there’s a hell of a lot of swords pointed at each other in Seireitei at the moment.”</p><p>She turns demanding eyes up at Kisuke. “Well? What about you then? Is Ichigo gonna be okay? And the other two I guess.”</p><p>“They’ll be fine,” Kisuke says even as his thoughts race. Execution? That’s extreme even for Central 46, especially when a Shiba is involved. They should know full well that attacking one of that clan is attacking the entire clan, that attacking Kaien is attacking the Eighth and Thirteenth, and that attacking <em>Ichigo</em> might as well be attacking half the Gotei <em>and</em> her whole family.</p><p>Besides, striking at even one of the Five Pillars of Soul Society is never a good idea.</p><p>“Aizen is still alive?” He asks next.</p><p>Hiyori actually smirks. “Yeah, but last I heard, he’s still in a coma. Ichigo kicked his ass pretty hard.”</p><p>Excellent. Just enough left for Kisuke to get a piece of him.</p><p>“Keep me posted,” He orders as the monitor guarding Ichigo goes off. He hesitates for a moment, then adds awkwardly, “You’re alright too though? Hirako-san told me you were, but…”</p><p>Hiyori rolls her eyes. “I’m <em>fine</em>. I hid pretty well as soon as I realized somethin’ was seriously wrong with that team from the Ninth. And then Ichigo crashed in with Shinji and the others. I barely got scratched, and that was just because that smiley-eyed creep Ichimaru got in a lucky hit.”</p><p>Kisuke exhales. “Good. Then just make sure you get some rest; don’t spend all your time out here. And until you have proof that Central 46 has rescinded the execution order-” He pauses a beat. “-<em>and</em> sent along a formal apology to the Shiba Clan, don’t stand down.”</p><p>Hiyori snorts. “I don’t need <em>you</em> to tell me that.”</p><p>Kisuke smiles briefly, and then shunpos away again. He gets back to his labs just in time to find Ichigo struggling to sit up.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be getting up yet,” Kisuke scolds, but he’s already at her side, one arm sliding around her back to support her.</p><p>“What day is it?” Ichigo mumbles, sagging against him once she’s more or less upright. “What’s happening?”</p><p>She obediently sips at the cup of water Kisuke holds up to her lips, and it seems to revive her a bit more, if only to let her shoot him an impatient look.</p><p>At least she’s well enough to do that.</p><p>It doesn’t take long for Kisuke to summarize the situation outside since he doesn’t know all the details himself, and then he tells her about the Hougyoku and its effects and the monster that now lives inside her soul.</p><p>Ichigo, of course, just shrugs. “Well, at least I’m alive to learn to live with it.” She glances down at herself and wrinkles her nose. “Now help me to the bathroom. I need a shower and a change of clothes. And food. In that order.” She glances at him knowingly. “We probably both do.”</p><p>Kisuke heaves a sigh, but he supposes she isn’t wrong.</p><p>“You first,” He says firmly, and without waiting for a reply, he simply scoops her up into his arms instead of levering her to her feet.</p><p>“Kisuke!” Ichigo yelps, fingers scrambling for the collar of his Shihakushou.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be up at all,” Kisuke grumbles. “But if you insist, I’ll have to carry you.”</p><p>Ichigo makes a disgruntled noise, but it’s telling that she doesn’t complain. She’s pliant as Kisuke helps her into the shower, and luckily, there’s a stool he can stick inside so she won’t have to stand.</p><p>He makes sure the towels and soap are all within easy reach before straightening to back out of the room, only to pause when Ichigo’s hand catches his own.</p><p>Kisuke stills before glancing down. Ichigo tips her head back to look up at him, and she doesn’t smile, but the way she looks at him is unmistakable, steadfast and warm and full of something like wonder.</p><p>Kisuke’s on his knees before he realizes, and his free hand extends with a mind of its own, tucking a stray strand of Ichigo’s hair behind her ear, and then just… lingering, his fingers skittering across her temple, his thumb tracing the curve of a cheekbone. Ichigo leans into his touch, eyes falling to half-mast, and for a while, neither of them speaks.</p><p>“…How long?” Kisuke asks at last, because he’s wanted to know since he figured it out.</p><p>Ichigo’s mouth twists, wry and just a little self-mocking. “Well, not from the very <em>first</em> time I saw you at least.”</p><p>Kisuke blinks, then splutters. “Saw-? You mean back when Yoruichi-san was still dragging me over to your estate every few months?”</p><p>Even Ichigo looks faintly embarrassed as she admits, “I had the biggest crush. It was horrible.”</p><p>Kisuke tries to remember, but all he can recall of Ichigo back then is… orange hair, a roiling mass of reiatsu she could never quite control, and a tendency for never being able to stay still.</p><p>“You never spoke to me,” Kisuke says haltingly after a long minute of searching his memory.</p><p>Ichigo shrugs. “I was just some girl who didn’t even have her Zanpakutou yet, and you were already a Third Seat in the Gotei. You were smart, and strong, and you were only interested in people who could keep up with you. What was I supposed to talk to you about?” She straightens, and the tilt of her chin is all triumph. “I made you notice me though, once I was promoted to captain. And then you gave me a chance to get to know you a lot better than just from Yoruichi-nee-san’s stories.”</p><p>Kisuke wonders for all of half a second if Yoruichi had known, but of course she had.</p><p>(He’d always known that any feelings he’d felt for her beyond admiration and friendship would go nowhere. Yoruichi simply didn’t feel the same for him, but even if she did, the weight of his debt to her would always put them on uneven ground.</p><p>He’d known. She’d known. And in the end, she’d taken matters into her own hands - as she always had, wisdom and selfishness forever two parts of the same coin - and given him a chance for something new.)</p><p>“You’re a Shiba,” He says at last, and his hand drops to clasp hers. “I have no right to court you.”</p><p>Ichigo scoffs loudly. “Did I ever say I want to be courted? You think I want to deal with some faceless stranger sending me a bunch of gifts I’ll probably have no use for, and expecting me to retire and pop out children for him and tend to his house all day? Who do you think you’re talking to?” She shakes her head. “Besides, it’s not about <em>right</em>. Do you think Kaien-nii-san would ever force me to marry someone I want nothing to do with? I was lucky enough to be born a Shiba. The elders will fuss, but Kaien-nii-san will shut them up. And other people might talk, but my family won’t care, and more importantly, <em>I</em> won’t care.” She looks at him then, eyes blazing with that inner fire Kisuke has always been drawn to. “So long as you don’t care either, what do other people matter?”</p><p>Kisuke’s gaze drops to their joined hands. There’s still blood crusted underneath both their fingernails. But Ichigo’s hands fit comfortably in his own, and Kisuke never wants to let go.</p><p>He sighs. “You deserve bet-”</p><p>“<em>I</em> get to decide what I deserve,” Ichigo cuts him off, and her narrowed eyes dare him to argue. “And I’ve decided that I deserve you. That I <em>want</em> you. And it’s one thing if you don’t want me. If you just want to stay friends, then I’ll respect that. But don’t give me that ‘you deserve better’ bullshit. You’re plenty good enough for me. You make me laugh. You make me <em>happy</em>. You feed me when I forget to eat, and you put up with me when I’m whining about stupid things, and you listen to me when I talk about all the human literature I like to read even though I know you’re not very interested in that stuff. You trust me to watch your back on the field, and you respect me enough to never go easy on me in a spar. You always make time for me even when you’re busy, and when I’m having a bad day, just seeing you makes it better.” Kisuke closes his eyes, and his next breath <em>shakes</em> in his chest. Ichigo forges on, relentless. “Why would I want anyone else when the man I love is already right here beside me?”</p><p>She might’ve had more to say. But Kisuke doesn’t hear it because he’s already surged up and caught her mouth with his own. One of his arms snakes around her back while his other hand slams into the shower wall behind her so they don’t go tumbling to the floor. For a moment, the kiss is awkward, teeth catching on lips, the angle not quite right, and then Ichigo makes a sound that’s pure relief before tilting her head, and their mouths slide together like puzzle pieces clicking into place.</p><p>They’re both out of breath when they finally part, Ichigo more so than Kisuke, and Kisuke mentally berates himself for forgetting that Ichigo is still recovering. “Sorry, are you-”</p><p>Ichigo rolls her eyes and steadies herself on the chair. “I’m <em>fine</em>.” She grins cheekily. “More than fine now.”</p><p>Kisuke huffs a laugh, helplessly fond and hopelessly in love with this ridiculous woman. “Alright. Alright, Ichigo. But can we at least get you that shower and some food in you first before we continue?”</p><p>Ichigo pouts, but she also reaches back to tug her hair out of the braid Kisuke had put it in to keep it out of the way when he’d been working on saving her life. “Fine, but only cuz I’m starving.”</p><p>As if on cue, her stomach growls, and Kisuke hides another smile by leaning forward and kissing her again, although he keeps it short enough to make Ichigo grumble a little.</p><p>“I’ll see what we have in the lounge,” Kisuke says, finally getting to his feet again.</p><p>Ichigo waves him out, and by the time Kisuke’s fetched a fresh set of clothes from a side-cabinet and left it on the counter, the water is running and steam is curling up to the ceiling.</p><p>Kisuke leaves her to it, gently closing the door behind him. He pauses there, looks down at his hands, and feels the phantom warmth of Ichigo’s still curled around them.</p><p>If he can have this, he thinks, if Ichigo truly <em>wants</em> this, wants <em>him</em> of all people, then…</p><p>Then even if her family protests and the world disapproves, Kisuke will have to be dead and gone before he ever lets her go. If Ichigo is willing to fight for them, then how can Kisuke possibly do anything less?</p><p>-0-</p><p>Another week passes, the detente ends, and the tension mostly eases. Unohana finally managed to heal Aizen enough for the man to at least wake up, even if he’s also been transferred to a cell to wait for trial. It’s guarded twenty-four/seven and layered under at least half a dozen barrier seals, and Aizen himself has been strapped down, his reiatsu locked away, and his Zanpakutou broken.</p><p>Kisuke gets in anyway. The guards are all Onmitsukidou and ultimately loyal to a woman who has no qualms helping Kisuke with his revenge.</p><p>Aizen’s eyes go wide when he sees him, and Kisuke doesn’t think he’s imagining the fear behind the fury.</p><p>“Here to kill me then?” The former lieutenant rasps.</p><p>Kisuke smiles, cold and dead and merciless. “Kill you? Do you think me so kind, Aizen-san?” Aizen stiffens as Kisuke produces a syringe, the liquid inside glowing an ominous crimson. “I invented this one just for you.” His smile drops. “You shouldn’t have touched Shiba Ichigo.”</p><p>He doesn’t give Aizen time to reply, or stall for time, or even beg. He’s not here for any of that.</p><p>He’s halfway back to his own compound when the screaming begins.</p><p>-0-</p><p>Soul Society comes to accept the species now called Visored. The Shiba Clan doesn’t really give them a choice in the matter. Ichigo, Kensei, and Mashiro were the ones most immediately affected by the Hogyoku, but everyone else who was there received a spark as well, just enough to gain the potential for Hollow powers or have it nullified under Kisuke’s experienced hands, and most of them pick the latter. Only Shinji does not.</p><p>Soul Society gets used to them. There isn’t any outward difference anyway once they learn to control their other half, and there’s so many other more interesting things to gossip about when it comes to these particular Shinigami-turned-Visored.</p><p>Like how Fifth Division captain Hirako Shinji mopes in guilt for three months before coming into work one day with all his hair shaved off. Rumour has it that Shiba Ichigo had had enough and chopped off his hair to shake him out of his cloud of misery. Another rumour says Sarugaki Hiyori just about laughed herself to death when she saw.</p><p>Or, like how the Ninth - already fanatically loyal to their captain and lieutenant - rallied around them in the aftermath of the Incident, and for a good six months, the tally of people that they sent to the Fourth every week exceeded even the Eleventh’s.</p><p>Or, like how Tenth Division captain Shiba Ichigo and Twelfth Division captain Urahara Kisuke were caught sharing a kiss at a sushi restaurant one summer afternoon, and word of it spread like wildfire. Rumour says Shiba Kaien laughed a noble house leader out the door when he’d dared suggest that the Shiba head should keep a tighter rein on his terribly undisciplined cousin. Another rumour says half the Tenth Division barracks were destroyed one afternoon because the Tenth’s lieutenant challenged the Twelfth’s captain to a spar that got… slightly out of hand. And yet another rumour tells of Shiba Ichigo herself starting a bar fight for the ages after someone had insulted her lover to her face.</p><p>But mostly, people see the two of them walking down the street, and it’s a familiar sight by this point. Some sigh of love stories and others sneer at a Rukon rat and bloodstained murderer putting his hands on a noble.</p><p>None of their opinions hold any weight though - that becomes clear enough. Not when Ichigo reaches for Kisuke’s hand like she knows he’ll always be there, and Kisuke stands next to Ichigo like his whole being is attuned to her very heartbeat.</p><p>Not when they look at each other like they’re two people perfectly in love. Because in the end, for them, that really is all that matters.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>#THE ONE WHERE ICHIGO HAS BEEN CRUSHING ON KISUKE FOREVER #SO SHE ENACTS HER FORTY-YEAR-PLAN TO HOOK HER MAN AND SUCCEEDS JUST BY BEING HERSELF</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. KHR + G69 + Bad Vongola AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ANONYMOUS asked:<br/>Ok so Im going to take this chance and go wild: GiottoxMukuro + Bad Vongola AU</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>UM. So, I sort of just sat on this last one cuz what even lmao. I checked AO3 and omg this ship exists??? but there’s like just two fics under it. But alright, here’s my stab at this very random pairing, it doesn’t even quite get all the way to a pairing, but I gave them both page time and at least you gave me something new to try XD Sorry it’s so late.</p><p>
  <strike>ALSO YAY I FINISHED ALL TEN</strike>
</p><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Dead!Tsuna, Resurrection/Reincarnation, Possession, Pre-Relationship, Flame Bonds, Bad Vongola AU, Probably hella OOC because what the actual fuck was this, don't get me wrong it was fun to write but this was such a random ship lmao</p><p>
  <a href="https://cheshiresense.tumblr.com/post/190622044448/ok-so-im-going-to-take-this-chance-and-go-wild">Tumblr Post</a>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p><b>1.</b> Ok so! First thing’s first - how do I stick these two into the same time period? Either full AU or time travel/reincarnation fuckery. Let’s go with reincarnation. Sort of. Where Neo Primo is literally Neo Primo ;)</p><p>Tsuna is dead. They’re in the future arc, he’s being forced to take the boss trial, and Hibari suffocates him just a little too long. So Tsuna dies at the feet of his ancestors, and Giotto is forced to witness the death of a fourteen-year-old boy who had never asked for any of this bloodshed but had also never backed down from it, never folded, even under the pressure of so many Vongola bosses. And Giotto is <em>angry</em>. He has spent centuries watching his beloved Vongola become mired in blood and sin, built on an empire of corpses and suffering. He is so sick of it, of not being able to do anything about it, but his latest descendant is dead, and his body is empty of a soul, and in that moment, more than anything else, all Giotto wants is a chance to <em>act</em>, to be something other than helpless, to fix even just a little of what his bloodline has broken.</p><p>Will and Flames and desperation are powerful things when combined.</p><p>Next thing Giotto knows, he’s opening his eyes to a cold-looking training room, the remains of a cage that <em>killed a fourteen-year-old boy</em> splintering around him, and it barely takes a thought for his Flames to surge up and out and slam the Cloud - Hibari Kyouya - into the far wall with a viciousness Giotto had spent the majority of his first life keeping under wraps. For a split second, he almost kills the Cloud for his <em>gall</em>. A Guardian who could murder his own Sky - however well-intentioned or unknowingly - is no Guardian at all, but then, out of all of the Tenth Generation, as far as Giotto can tell, not a single one of them had had a real bond with Tsuna. The one who’d come closest had been the Mist, but after ten years and the weight of Vongola’s sins on his shoulders, even that connection had dissolved.</p><p>If Giotto is honest, the person Tsuna had become ten years later under the crushing pressure of that Sun Arcobaleno and the Vongola had been near unrecognizable compared to the boy Giotto had so admired. But that man is dead, at least for now, dragged under by too many enemies and too many bad decisions, and all that’s left is this younger version, dragged to the future against his will and forced to fight a war of someone else’s making.</p><p>Not even that anymore obviously, and all that’s left is Giotto, a bloody legacy to his name and too many regrets to pay for. All he can do is live out Tsuna’s life now and hopefully undo some of the damage Vongola has wrought. Tsuna wouldn’t want him killing this Cloud though, and so Giotto lets him go in the end. Hibari gets to his feet, something bloodthirsty and thrilled gleaming in his eyes, completely ignorant of the fact that he’d killed his Sky, and all Giotto can think as he recalls the way Tsuna had always had to bribe this man for him to even consider helping is how Alaude must be rolling in his grave.</p><p>“I’m done,” He says instead, slicing a cool look around the room, and then he walks out, back to his room. Nobody stops him, but Giotto wouldn’t have stopped him either, with the shadow of his Flames licking across the concrete floor.</p><p> </p><p><b>2.</b> Giotto does his duty. Ten years in the future is far too late to really change anything significant, so the faster he takes care of business here, the sooner they can all go home. In the meantime, it amuses him - in a funny world-burning sort of way - how none of Tsuna’s friends seems to realize anything is wrong, that the boy they profess their loyalty to is gone, and his body has been usurped by an interloper. Giotto considers himself a decent enough actor, but for a bunch of Flame-actives with Vongola rings on their fingers and Guardian titles to their names, they’re a rather oblivious lot.</p><p>(All of Tsuna’s past and present and future sits in his memories now though, and Giotto can’t say he’s terribly surprised. The person these children wanted to follow was never actually the boy Tsuna had been, not entirely. They pay attention to the parts of him that they like, and ignore the rest like they don’t exist. It infuriates Giotto, because Tsuna <em>deserved better</em>, but Tsuna is dead, and even if Giotto has every intention of at the very least demoting them from their Guardian positions once they’re finished here, he cannot truly harm these children Tsuna had called friends.)</p><p>So he does his duty, fights the battles people want him to fight, and smiles blandly back in the face of Reborn’s suspicious glances. That hitman at least can sense something is off, if only because his student no longer cringes or screams, but no one save the Vongola bosses knows the details of what happens in the Vongola Trial, and it’s easy enough to balance Reborn’s misgivings with that.</p><p>It’s fun though, messing with the pseudo-baby. The last time Reborn tried to shoot him awake in the morning, Giotto had set the entire room on fire and ended up singeing off Reborn’s sideburns. The resulting training session had been grueling, but it had been worth finally getting back at the man first responsible for more or less browbeating Tsuna into obedience.</p><p>Pettiness aside, Giotto does put effort into training. Tsuna’s body is in decent shape, but it could be even better, so Giotto does his best to make it so. The weapons of the future are something of a marvel too, and he smiles indulgently at the full-grown wing-adorned flame-pelted Leone di Cieli that gracefully leaps out to greet him, but in the privacy of his rooms, he lets his Flames swirl free and summons the phoenix that had been his constant companion in his first life, the soul of his Flames, his will made sentient.</p><p>“Natsu,” He names the lion, after Tsuna, and welcomes Persephone home as she does a sweep of his bedroom before landing light and delicate on his shoulder, the way she’d always done in battle.</p><p>The looks on everyone’s faces when they see her with him is enough to make Giotto smile for the next week.</p><p> </p><p><b>3.</b> It becomes clear soon enough that they’re going to need all hands on deck for the final confrontation against Millefiore, but even before that, Giotto begins asking some pointed questions that Tsuna had thought but hadn’t quite been brave enough to ask.</p><p>“When are we getting my Mist out of Vendicare?” He enquires one night over dinner, and smiles pleasantly as everyone freezes. “We require all the aid we can get, yes? And Mukuro has always been strong.”</p><p>“Jyuudaime!” Hayato is the first to burst out, chair skidding back with how emphatically he stands up. “We don’t need that bastard!” Giotto <em>looks</em> at him, not a twitch in his expression, impenetrable as ice even as he keeps his features soft, and Hayato falters. “Or- Or even if we do, he can just possess Dokuro! He can’t be trusted if we let him out!”</p><p>Giotto stirs more sugar into his coffee - rich and sweet, gave G a minor aneurysm every time he saw it - just the way he likes it. “So we make him serve, and offer nothing in return?”</p><p>Giotto waits out the confused spluttering around him. Reborn is drilling holes into the side of his head but he pays the baby no mind.</p><p>“He has been imprisoned for ten years,” Giotto continues in mild tones. “And has remained loyal all this time, si?” He glances briefly at Chrome, the younger one, who stares back, meek and mute. She is loyal to Mukuro above all others, and it would’ve been so very easy for him to influence her into betraying Vongola - betraying <em>Tsuna</em> - anytime.</p><p>That he hadn’t, in all this time, is… something. It’s <em>something</em>. The lingering threads of a frayed potential bond. The stubborn refusal to give up something he’d once perhaps considered his. A promise once given - <em>keep my people safe and you will have my allegiance</em> - and never broken, not by Mukuro.</p><p>People have often remarked on how similar the First and Tenth Generations are. Personally, Giotto has never seen two sets of people so different.</p><p>“I wish to free him,” He says at last, over the voices of those trying to convince him otherwise. “Loyalty deserves loyalty returned. Whatever else he used to be, he has bled in my service for ten years. Surely that is enough to justify his release?”</p><p>It is not a question, and everyone knows it. Reborn is all but glaring now. He doesn’t like this new Tsuna who does not cower even in the face of his bullets.</p><p>Giotto is spiteful enough to enjoy every moment of it.</p><p>It is Takeshi who relents first. “Okay,” He says, all easy agreement and assessing eyes, and maybe this one at least is not so far removed from Ugetsu’s blood after all. “But how are we gonna do that? Vendicare’s hard to break into, right?”</p><p>Hayato - the only mafia-raised of the lot - looks positively horrified. “It’s not <em>hard</em>, Baseball Freak, it’s impossible!”</p><p>“But Mukuro already broke out twice, didn’t he?”</p><p>“Yes,” Giotto interjects, smiling at Takeshi, who preens a little under the attention and is in some ways possibly the most insane of them all. Giotto does have a fondness for those who consider laws as guidelines at best. “So, I suppose we need a Mist.” He takes a gulp of his coffee. “The Varia has a new one these days, don’t they?”</p><p>Three conferences, five one-sided shouting matches, and a hefty sum of money transferred over to the Varia accounts later, Giotto has secured Xanxus’ partly baffled, mostly irritated agreement for Fran’s services. Fran turns out to be a rather… precocious young man, but he has Mist Flames and skills that almost rival Mukuro’s, and Giotto is relatively content to leave the breakout to him.</p><p>His confidence is not misplaced. Days and half a dozen more battles later, with Byakuran grandstanding across from him, Giotto’s entire ill-fitted, misfit Family is gathered, and the First Generation appears at Giotto’s silent command to unseal the Vongola rings.</p><p>(All of them know what he is, the soul peering out from behind Tsuna’s eyes. But in this one moment, not even Daemon gives him away, and Giotto is free to finally unleash his carefully controlled wrath on the Family that had decimated his.)</p><p>Millefiore doesn’t stand a chance.</p><p> </p><p><b>4.</b> “You are not Sawada Tsunayoshi,” Mukuro - the older one - says in deceptively light tones as he joins Giotto on the balcony. It’s late, the night before they would all finally return to the past, and the two of them are probably the only ones still awake.</p><p>“No,” Giotto confirms, because there’s no hiding it from this man. “I’m afraid Sawada Tsunayoshi perished in Kyouya’s Box Weapon when he and Reborn attempted to force a Vongola Trial.”</p><p>Mukuro, staring out at the sprawling woods before them, does not visibly react, does not even move. For a moment, it doesn’t even seem like he’s breathing, and that’s what gives him away.</p><p>Giotto does not say he is sorry. He <em>is</em>, for this, and for too many other things to list, but whatever connection had formed between Tsuna and his Mist had been lost a long time ago, and <em>sorry</em> only sounds trite in the face of such a travesty. The only reason Mukuro had never drifted away, Giotto suspects, was because the Mist had refused to let go. Mukuro himself would never admit it, perhaps never even acknowledge it to himself, but if there was one thing Giotto had always envied Tsuna for, it was his ability to earn a Mist’s devotion so completely.</p><p>(And so it had hurt all the more to watch the years go by as Tsuna allowed Vongola to convince him to leave Mukuro in Vendicare. Hurt most of all to realize, one day, that Tsuna no longer cared so long as Mukuro continued reporting in and doing as he was told.)</p><p>“What will you do with my younger self?” Mukuro eventually asks, carefully void of every emotion save for the thinnest veneer of detached interest.</p><p>“Free him,” Giotto replies promptly, seeing no need for word games here. Reborn had tried to interrogate him about his Vongola Trial, and Giotto had given him every answer but a straight one. It had been highly entertaining. “If he wishes, he will have a place in my Famiglia. If he does not, then I will ensure he is able to start a new life elsewhere with his people, without Vongola dogging their every step.” He pauses, absently considering his hands, more solid than they’ve been in four hundred years. “Even Tsunayoshi’s fear of Reborn was not enough to stop him from asking repeatedly after you. This is the least I can do for your younger self when Tsunayoshi worried about him so often.”</p><p>Mukuro scoffs, a hollow puff of air that fades to nothing. “Had he a few more years in him, you would’ve had nothing to concern yourself with.”</p><p>Giotto inclines his head in acknowledgement but says nothing more. There is probably no one who knew Tsuna - who fought him and lost to him and <em>understood</em> him - more than Mukuro. The Mist doesn’t need Giotto expounding on the rise and fall of one of the brightest and most short-lived Skies the world would ever see.</p><p>“You will not tell the others about me?” Giotto asks instead, more curious than any kind of anxious about it.</p><p>Mukuro tips a mocking facsimile of a smile in his direction, looking him straight-on for the first time since his arrival. “What business is it of mine, if Vongola wishes to destroy itself?”</p><p>Giotto half-smiles, half-grimaces. He supposes this is hardly a surprise either; it was never Vongola that Mukuro swore unspoken fealty to.</p><p>So instead, he reaches out, gently catching one of Mukuro’s hands in his own and knowing he can only because Mukuro allows it. Mismatched eyes watch him like a hawk, a derisive curl on his lips that freezes when Giotto presses the flickering heat of a piece of Sky Flame into his palm.</p><p>Then he steps back, once, twice, enough room to sketch an esoteric bow, too formal for this age but recognizable enough here and now if Mukuro’s sharp intake of breath is anything to go by.</p><p>Gratitude. Apology. And a dissolution of debt and duty between Guardian and Sky.</p><p>If Mukuro so wishes, even after Giotto is gone, the shard of Sky will ensure a clean break from Vongola, and not even Sawada Tsunayoshi will be able to track his former Guardian down. It is all Giotto can offer him.</p><p>He straightens, glancing at the piece of Sky now settled into the shimmering form of a phoenix feather. A new life, if Mukuro wants it.</p><p>He meets the Mist’s gaze. Mukuro is the first to look away, fingers curling around the feather, eyes on the horizon, and he doesn’t speak again.</p><p>Giotto nods, takes his leave, and he does not see the Mist again, not this version at least. Once time straightens itself out, the adult Tsuna of this universe will return, and while Millefiore is no longer a threat, Vongola - and its Decimo - will still be the same stagnant bloodstained mess.</p><p>There is nothing Giotto can do about that, but at the back of his mind, he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better after all to have let Millefiore wipe Vongola out.</p><p> </p><p><b>5.</b> Later, much later, after a jailbreak and Daemon and a broken curse, Giotto and his Guardians - still no bonds, but he can’t seem to find a good time to get rid of them, so maybe instead of that, he can educate them to be better - sit down for a Family dinner at the most upscale restaurant Namimori has to offer, with the Ninth and his men, the CEDEF and even Varia. They’re in public so everyone has their law-abiding citizen face on, but (a redo of) the Inheritance Ceremony is imminent, and Timoteo smiles, sly and pleased that all the pieces have finally fallen into place. He waves Giotto into the seat on his immediate right and doesn’t even question how very little Giotto resembles Tsuna these days, ascribing the changes to Reborn’s training and recent battles and growing up, and looking no further than that.</p><p>The food is good, Italian but cooked by the best chefs on Vongola payroll. Giotto stares Kyouya into grudging silence over the fare, and then he focuses on chatting amicably with Timoteo, weaving smooth flattery into casual but attentive conversation the way he’d learned to do a lifetime ago.</p><p>Giotto watched Timoteo grow up. There is no skeleton in his closet that Giotto did not witness him stashing away. But he is old and past his prime and he will soon learn that his successor is not as easy to control as he’d hoped, as he thinks, so Giotto can smile back now and give him his momentary triumph, smile and sip his wine and not let his eyes linger on every bite of food Timoteo takes.</p><p>During a lull in the conversation, he turns and catches Mukuro’s eye. His Mist is seated beside his female counterpart, all the way at the end of the line, farthest from his Sky to any outsider’s eye. But Mukuro smirks back from behind his cloth napkin, and as the Nono’s dessert is carried in, the faint twist of Mist Flames - unnoticed by all except two - darts into the panna cotta.</p><p>Timoteo eats his fill, compliments the chef, beams at Giotto’s gently filial fussing again like the kindly grandfather he excels at pretending to be, and nobody thinks to question how masterfully Giotto draws all attention to himself and his rowdier Guardians, never letting the generally jovial mood falter, his Sky Flames a subtle pulsing encouragement beneath it all to distract them from the knife at their backs.</p><p>The whole affair is a success. At the very least, nobody threw any food, no fights broke out, and no one lost their tempers. It almost feels like a miracle.</p><p>They part ways in groups, and to their credit, Hayato and Kyouya only try to kill each other after the elder Vongola party is gone. It doesn’t take long for Ryouhei to join in, and at a glance from Mukuro, Chrome scoops Lambo up and picks up her pace to catch up to a laughing Takeshi.</p><p>Mukuro falls into step beside Giotto. Giotto had asked, after the Arcobaleno business was finally over, if Mukuro would stay. Mukuro had asked what Giotto would offer if he did.</p><p>“A place in my Family, for you and yours,” Giotto had sworn. “And a hand in toppling the Vongola Empire once and for all.”</p><p>Mukuro had smiled, ten years’ worth of another world’s memories behind it, and six lives’ worth of suffering driving his answer.</p><p>“Tsunayoshi would never have chosen this method,” Mukuro says now, voice pitched low but as idly as if he were commenting on the weather.</p><p>Giotto smiles, grim and long past the point of any return.</p><p>Tsuna was his <em>favourite</em>. He reminded Giotto of the man he used to be, when Vongola was still a goal wrapped in optimism and determination, before they’d become embroiled in the mafia and Giotto had spent the next four hundred years after his death watching his life’s work build itself a throne of corpses.</p><p>Tsuna was his favourite, but he was also an ideal Giotto won’t ever be again, and can<em>not</em> be if he truly wants to see this iteration of Vongola dead in his second lifetime. Tsuna would’ve been eaten alive by Vongola - Giotto had seen an entire future’s worth of proof of that.</p><p>“I am not Tsunayoshi,” Giotto says, and it is another regret he will have to carry, but their world is neither kind nor fair, and Tsuna as he was would never have survived it.</p><p>Mukuro studies him, a thoughtful tilt to his head, and something like fascination glitters in his eyes. “No, you are not,” He agrees. “But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”</p><p>Giotto glances at him, then ahead, at children who had almost killed and been almost killed mere days ago, now roughhousing amongst themselves. “The world could do with more Tsunayoshis.”</p><p>“The world <em>needs</em> more of <em>you</em>,” Mukuro retorts just as swiftly, a sardonic sort of amusement in his smirk. “In that other future, Tsunayoshi proved beyond a doubt that everything he promised, he couldn’t keep, didn’t he? And yet here you are, Vongola Primo, poisoning your enemies over dinner, and just yesterday you had me hide you while you met with Gesso and Simon and Giglio Nero in private. You certainly don’t waste any time.” His smirk widens. “If Vongola isn’t careful, you’ll turn half of Europe against the older generation before they realize it.”</p><p>Giotto hums and doesn’t deny any of it. “You would be willing to aid me though?”</p><p>Mukuro arches an eyebrow, and his right eye flickers briefly with Mist Flames. “Have I not been doing so already?”</p><p>Giotto nods. “Yes, and I am grateful. But lending a hand now is not the same as devoting at least the next ten years of your life to a goal most would consider impossible. And I am not Tsunayoshi.”</p><p>Mukuro’s steps slow, then stop entirely. Giotto blinks and halts as well, half-turning.</p><p>“Does that matter so much to you?” Mukuro asks, peering at him with surprisingly genuine puzzlement. “Do you think it matters so much to me? That you are not Tsunayoshi?”</p><p>Giotto half-shrugs, and Mukuro shakes his head. “Tsunayoshi had a heart that I will never fully understand,” He says, blunt in a way he almost never is. “He was naive and foolish, hopeful and soft, and it made him as weak as it made him strong. I could trust him to never turn on Chrome or Ken or Chikusa, even if they or I tested his tolerance, but by that same logic, I could never have trusted him to stand firm against Vongola’s ideals, no matter what he proclaimed. And I was right, wasn’t I? In the end, Vongola destroyed him, and he became one of them.”</p><p>He pauses, his gaze sliding away, hands coming together to twist one of the rings on his fingers. Then he looks back at Giotto, and his next smirk is equal parts challenge and approval. “You though. You have witnessed the results of letting your previous Mist Guardian walk free, and spent years watching your descendants commit atrocities in the name of strengthening your organization. If I were to promise you my loyalty, and then betray you sometime down the road, you would slit my throat yourself. But at the same time, at least I know - you are both ruthless enough and determined enough to see your objectives through to the end, with a conviction that’s centuries in the making. The current Vongola would have to kill you to stop you.” His right eye flares indigo again. “So I suppose that is where I come in.”</p><p>Up ahead, the others turn a corner, still bickering. Giotto thinks Takeshi has probably noticed that he and Mukuro have fallen behind, and of course Chrome knows, but neither of them stops to wait either.</p><p>Mukuro steps back, once, twice, and Giotto’s eyes widen as the Mist lifts a hand to brush over the earring he hasn’t stopped wearing since he got it. And then… well.</p><p>The Mukuro from the future must’ve known how because this Mukuro doesn’t even look awkward as he drops to one knee and bows his head, just a dip, slow enough to look deliberate, proud enough to meet Giotto’s gaze again afterwards.</p><p>“You asked for ten years, <em>Neo Primo</em>,” Mukuro announces. “So, very well, I will pledge you ten years of my life, for you to use as you see fit, so long as you keep your word. We can revisit this in a decade, but for the next ten years, I will make you untouchable to your enemies and sow discord amongst them in your name.” He smiles and it’s a mad and bloodthirsty thing, the same furious hateful beast he’d aimed at Daemon Spade when he’d sought to rip Chrome from Mukuro’s side. “And should the worst come to pass and I go the way of my predecessor, may my life be forfeit at your hands.”</p><p>He reaches up, catches Giotto’s hand in his own, and his red eye glows as orange and indigo burst into existence between their fingers, a blaze of light under the night sky as they twine together, fierce and unyielding and true.</p><p>They both gasp from the surge of power that rushes through them as the Guardian bond snaps into place, the first one Giotto will ever have in this body, the first one in over four hundred years, a core of Flame that promises a home, something Daemon had never been able to give him, and Giotto doesn’t even think before he’s yanking Mukuro to his feet and reeling him close.</p><p>Tsuna had been short for his age so Giotto isn’t quite eye-level with his new Mist, but it hardly matters when he curls a near-bruising grip along Mukuro’s jaw and sees the same hunger and possessiveness he feels reflected in the illusionist’s eyes.</p><p>“A Guardian bond is not something I take lightly,” Giotto murmurs, and he knows even without a mirror that his own Flames are burning in his eyes. “You are mine now, and I do not share. In ten years, you will pledge another ten, and another ten after that, and any who dare to try and take you from me, I would run rivers red with their lifeblood.”</p><p>(These oaths are old, old and binding and near-forgotten, bastardized ten ways to Sunday but still echoing of power, and even in Giotto’s time, only G and Ugetsu had sworn them. That his new reign would begin with one, when as far as Giotto knows, none have spoken them in centuries - perhaps it speaks of the dawn of a new age.)</p><p>Mukuro inhales shakily, not at all prepared for the sheer depth and <em>intensity</em> of a true Flame bond. But the grip he has on Giotto’s wrist is just as tight as Giotto’s, and it only takes him another breath to regain his bearings.</p><p>“As you Will it, Giotto,” Mukuro murmurs, and it crackles over Giotto’s skin. No one has spoken his name since his resurrection.</p><p>The bond settles between them, calm now but no less potent. Giotto lets go, tickling a tongue of Sun-tinted Sky Flame along Mukuro's skin to soothe the sting left behind. Mukuro only huffs a breath of laughter, gaze still unwavering on Giotto’s face.</p><p>“Well then,” The Mist - <em>Giotto’s Mist</em> - smiles, quieter, more serene, like a glass-spun secret cloaked in shadow, but exultantly bright all the same. “Long live the new King. May your reign be long and prosperous.”</p><p> </p>
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